O Lord, our gracious God and our Heavenly
Father, we thank Thee that in Thy providence
and in Thy mercy we are met together
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We thank Thee for faith in Him and
for bringing us to come this day to
Thee as those who have no righteousness in
themselves, but who rejoice in the knowledge that
by His obedience unto death Thou hast provided
righteousness for us, that we might come with
acceptance even to Thy throne of grace.
O God, we pray Thee that Thou would
strengthen us in heart and mind, that the
unction of Thy Spirit may rest upon us,
and that we may together glorify Thee, that
our meeting may be under Thy blessing, and
that we may sincerely desire in all that
we shall do and say to please Thee.
Do Thou hear our cry, and have mercy
upon us, for Jesus Christ's sake.
Amen.
Now as you know the subject that I
was asked to speak upon this week is
the subject of the history of revival.
And that is a subject which I was
very delighted to be asked to speak upon.
There has been some true revival, we believe,
of the knowledge of historic reformed Christianity.
And in England that began round about the
year 1950.
That's several years before the work of the
Banner of Truth Trust began.
But about the time, about that year, about
1950, there were a number of influences which
caused people, and especially young people, to reconsider
the history of the Church, and especially the
history of revivals.
I suppose for many years in England there
had been practically no awareness of the history
of the work of God previous to about
the last 50 years.
And then there came a point of time
in 1949 when John Calvin's Institutes of the
Christian Religion were reprinted, when the Evangelical Library
opened its work in London, and when a
conference began in London called the Puritan Conference.
And these agencies focused attention upon some of
the great revivals of the past.
If you were to go this morning into
the Evangelical Library in London you would find
it no doubt a rather quaint old building.
But before you would see the books that
are on the shelves you would see a
portrait of many divines of past generations, of
Whitefield and Toplady and the Wesley's and many
others.
And when that library opened its work in
London it caused people to ask many questions
concerning these unfamiliar faces and the books that
they had written.
And then there was also, of course, the
ministry of Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, who I
believe is known to many of you.
And he called attention to men such as
Whitefield, and in the Puritan Conference, of which
he was and is the chairman, that conference
directed attention back to the great revivals of
the past.
Now, under the hand of God, that rediscovery
of history provided a great stimulus, an impetus,
a movement forward.
And I believe then, with all my heart,
that the subject that we are to study
this week is the one that is so
stirring and inspiring and worth coming this distance
to speak on.
Let me just give you an example in
my own experience in recent months of how
this subject can rekindle warmth and life in
one's own heart.
A few months ago, I had arrangements to
go and preach in a village called Rose
in North Wales.
And when the time came for me to
go to this place, I have to confess
that I had a good deal of reluctance
about the trip.
It was a journey down from Scotland, it
meant being away for a few days when
I seemed to be particularly busy.
And on top of that, the name of
Rose was as foreign to me as it
no doubt is to you.
I had never heard of the place, and
I didn't know anyone who lived there.
I had therefore no knowledge of what to
expect.
And so I went with some hesitation.
But when I got there, I found that
my host, in whose cottage I stayed for
these few days, was an old man over
80 years of age.
But his conversation was more stirring to me
than anything I had heard for some long
while.
He had been a young man in the
last movement of the Spirit of God in
the British Isles.
That is to say, the last extensive revival
in the year 1904.
He was then in his late teens, working
in a coal mine.
I had heard things about that revival, but
I had not met someone who had been
in the center of part of it, and
not met someone who had the doctrinal judgment
which this man had.
Now he had an excellent library of books.
It would have made some of you men
to water at the mouth as we say
in Britain.
I don't know if you say that.
But he couldn't read these books anymore.
He was almost completely blind, but he loved
the books, and he knew just where they
were on his shelves.
Well, we were.
It was in the middle of winter, and
he would sit by his fire, and he
began to speak to me of those days.
And I could see that the knowledge which
he had of what had happened was, at
that moment, an inspiration to him.
He was truly a man of fervent prayer,
of energetic witness.
He had been the means in this locality.
He was no preacher, not at all.
He had been a miner all his days,
but he had been the means of the
formation of a church.
And as we spoke of these things, the
fire burned.
He told me of what had happened in
that village, of the homes that had been
transformed, of these rough, tough men that had
been broken and humbled and brought into the
church, and become leaders for many years after.
And then, after lunch, he suggested that we
might go out and look at the village
of Rose.
And he would try to point out to
me some of the places.
And this is what we did.
We went round, and as best he could,
he knew the place of course.
He had lived in it in childhood.
And I have never in all my life
seen so many church buildings in such a
small area.
I suppose there were only about three or
four streets in the place.
But there was a time, not so very
long ago, when practically the whole community was
hearing evangelical gospel preached through the influence of
that and of earlier revivals.
When I came home from that village of
Rose, with new strength, it seemed to do
something too.
And I suggest to you that this is
the effect that the study of revivals ought
to have upon us.
Now, before we go any further, I would
like to take up, just for a little
while, one or two supporting reasons for that
assertion on the profitability of our study.
There is of course a danger that the
study of church history can be abused.
There are some who might say, is there
not a danger that studying the past simply
diverts us from the present hour?
Is it not a danger that we shall
seek to relive the lives of other people
instead of doing the work that God has
given us to do in this present generation?
Well, that is a danger.
I think it is partly to warn us
against that danger that the word of God
tells us in the book of Ecclesiastes.
Say not thou, what is the cause that
the former days were better than thee?
That is not a question we are to
ask in a certain way.
We are not to, as it were, complain
of the present providence of God in his
dealings with the church, and we are not
to praise the past in such a way
as to disparage what God is doing at
this present hour.
Say not thou, what is the cause that
the former days are better than thee?
There is a sinful way, and a way
that abuses the history of the church, and
into that we ought not to enter.
Nevertheless, recognizing that there is such a danger,
I believe that there is a far greater
danger which results from the neglect of the
history of the church of God, and the
neglect of the study of the works which
God has wrought in the earth.
For one thing, you will always find in
the scripture, I believe, that a time of
spiritual declension, a time of spiritual indifference, of
colds, of deadness, that such periods are ever
associated with a neglect and a forgetfulness of
the dealings of God with his people.
You have, I suppose, a classic statement of
that at the beginning of the book of
Judges.
At the beginning of that long period of
some 350 dark years in the history of
Israel, the explanation for the history which is
unfolded in the book of Judges is given
us there in the second chapter, and in
verses 8 and 10, where we read these
significant words.
And the people served the Lord all the
days of Joshua, and all the days of
the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen
all the great works of the Lord that
he did for Israel.
Those who had seen the works of the
Lord, they lived for him throughout all their
generation.
And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant
of the Lord, died.
And also, all that generation were gathered unto
their fathers, and there arose another generation after
them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet
the works which he had done for Israel.
And it was in their ignorance of the
works that God had done, that their downward
path commenced.
So that we have through the scriptures, these
repeated divine testimonies given to us, as to
the importance and the necessity of remembering what
God has done.
When the Passover feast, for example, was instituted,
as we read in Deuteronomy chapter 16.
And the manner in which that feast was
to be kept, was laid down.
The bitter herbs that were to be taken,
and no leavened bread, and so on.
And when all that is recorded, we read
these words, that this was to be done
year by year, throughout all generations, that thou
mayest remember the day when thou camest forth
out of the land of Egypt, all the
days of thy life.
It was to perpetuate the memory of something,
that there was a visible reminder given them,
in the Passover.
So when the children of Israel went across
the Jordan, as we read there in Joshua
chapter 4, God commanded them to take these
great stones.
And as they had crossed, and were beginning
the conquest of the land, these stones were
to be piled up, twelve great stones.
And the purpose of those stones, was not
for the present generation, they knew what had
happened, how the waters of Jordan had parted,
and how they had been delivered out of
Egypt.
It was for the generations that were to
come.
And God said there in Joshua chapter 4,
and that this may be a sign among
you, that when your children ask their fathers
in time to come, saying, what mean ye
by these stones?
Then ye shall answer them, that the waters
of Jordan were cut off before the ark
of the covenant of the Lord, when it
passed over Jordan.
And these stones shall be a memorial unto
the children of Israel forever.
Now that was God laying upon his people,
the command to remember his mighty works.
And so it goes on through the scripture.
The prophet Isaiah, God speaking through Isaiah, commands
them to look to the pit whence they
were dug.
Jeremiah commands the people to stand in the
old way, and see, and ask for the
old paths.
The prophets Hosea and Ezekiel, charge the people
with the sin of forgetting their early days.
God says through the prophet Micah chapter 2
and verse 7, O thou that art named
the house of Jacob, is the spirit of
the Lord straightened?
Are these his doings?
And so through the history, right way into
the book of Revelation, when we find the
ascended Christ charging the church.
In the second chapter, the church at Ephesus
with the sin of a failure of memory.
Remember God says, therefore, from whence thou art
fallen, and repent.
So we are to study the history of
revivals, in order that we may have a
standard of comparison.
That we may look at the works which
God has done in former ages.
That we may ask ourselves, whether the zeal
and the devotion, and the fervor of spirit
which was then in the church, whether that
is our spirit, or is the spirit of
the Lord straightened?
Are these his doings, says Micah?
Are you who profess his name, are you
the people in whom that spirit dwells, who
worked with such power and grace in former
times?
The danger of neglecting the history of revivals
then, is the danger that such ignorance will
be accompanied by spiritual decline.
But there is a second thing to be
said.
The primary duty and permanent duty of the
church, is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the study of revivals, is a great
stimulus to the exercise of that faith.
And conversely we may say, that the neglect
of that history, is an encouragement to unbelief.
We are bidden and charged by the scripture,
to know that Christ, ascended and exalted, is
the one who commissions the Holy Spirit to
bestow all saving blessings upon men.
Christ is the dispenser of the Spirit.
The mighty operations of the Spirit of God
on the day of Pentecost, were traced by
the Apostle Peter, to Christ being at the
right hand of God exalted, having received of
the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost,
hath shed forth this which ye now see
and hear.
The plenitude of the Spirit is given to
Christ, to bestow upon his body.
The church lives in the age which the
Apostle Paul called, the ministration of the Spirit.
The church is to preach with the Holy
Ghost sent down from heaven.
And those supplies of power and of grace
from the Spirit, are to be received in
no other way than by faith in the
exalted person of Jesus Christ, the one who
has purchased for sinners, all the work, all
the grace of salvation and sanctification.
Now if we believe that, as I trust
we do, if that is the basis of
our hope in revivals, then we need to
ask ourselves, why is it that there is
so little anticipation of revival in the church?
Why is there so little expectation?
If we believe that Christ is the one
who dispenses the Spirit, who pours out the
Spirit, who is not straitened, who can do
what he did on the day of Pentecost,
then why is it that our anticipation is
so feeble?
And there is only one answer to that
question.
It is unbelief as to the person and
the work of Jesus Christ.
And even those who have been involved in
great revivals, have had to make their confession,
that when those revivals began, they could scarce
believe the very things which their eyes saw.
William Tennant for example, here in New Jersey,
in the year 1757, was witness to a
great revival.
And this is what he said, The work
so far exceeded my most enlarged expectations, that
I was lost in surprise, and constrained often
to say, Is it so?
Can it be true?
That is when he was in the revival.
Can it be true?
Nor is my being eye and ear witness,
from Monday to Friday, enough to recover me
from my astonishment.
I felt as the apostles felt, when it
was told them, that the Lord was risen
from the dead.
The danger of unbelief, is the church's greatest
danger.
The danger of not doing justice, to what
we are told, concerning the resources of power,
and of glory, which are in the Lord
Jesus Christ, for the advancement of his kingdom.
And the reason why unbelief, takes such strong
hold upon the church, is often because of
our ignorance, of those works of power, which
Christ has done, in years past.
Now this week I hope, to mention often
the name of Dr. Archibald Alexander of Princeton,
whose book, The Log College, is a description
of the great awakening, in the Middle States,
in the 18th century.
And in his preface to that book, The
Log College, which he wrote in the year
1845, in the preface he says this, speaking
to American Christians, Many people among us, are
not aware, that the ground on which they
tread, has as it were, been hallowed by
the footsteps of the Almighty.
They are not aware.
And that is even more true today.
Here then are some reasons, why we are
to study, and ought to study, the history
of revival.
It encourages faith.
It stimulates us to look with new hope,
and new prayer, to the person of Christ.
It leads us to self-examination.
It humbles us, to realize how weak we
are, how lean we are.
And at the same time, it brings before
us, revelations of God's power and majesty, which
raise us up, to this new confident expectation.
Now, as we proceed, I want to, in
a few words, attempt to define, the word
revival, and then to make three general observations,
on the subject.
And then, after that, in the course of
the following mornings, to deal more directly, with
the history of revival, and particularly some of
the leaders, of revival, in previous ages.
But first of all, let us define, what
we mean by the word revival.
By the word revival, we ought to understand,
a powerful activity of the Spirit of God,
in large numbers of people, at the same
time.
It is the work of the Spirit of
God, not in an individual, but in a
large number of persons, simultaneously.
And the effect of that work, is to
reanimate Christians, to refresh Christians, to raise them
up to new vigor, and strength, and zeal,
and prayer.
Refreshing Christians, converting sinners, and convicting worldly men,
as to the truth of the gospel.
Now, in a revival, these three things always
happen.
There is refreshment for the church.
They seem to be clothed with new strength.
People who have been, it may be, Christians
for years, they are suddenly charged with energy,
and new devotion to Christ.
There is the conversion of ungodliness, and there
is further, an evidence upon the community, of
the presence and the power of God, which
may not convert men, but which subdues sin,
and which promotes godliness in communities, and sometimes
in whole nations, and lands.
That, my friends, is a revival.
Let me give you the definition, which a
last century American gives Dr. Baxter Dickinson.
He defines a revival in these words.
By a revival of religion, we understand an
uncommon, and general interest on the subject of
salvation, produced by the Holy Spirit, through the
instrumentality of divine truth.
The work is very commonly preceded by a
prevailing and affecting coldness on the subject of
personal religion, such as leads Christians to feel
the necessity of extraordinary prayer for themselves, and
for others.
In its progress, the thoughtless are alarmed, convinced
of their guilt, inquire what they shall do,
receive Jesus as their savior, rejoice in hope
of future glory, join themselves to the people
of God, and in important respects, pursue a
new course of life.
Well, that is a good definition of revival.
Let us pass on then from definition to
three general observations.
The first is this.
It needs to be underlined when we speak
of revival, that we speak of a sovereign
work of the Spirit of God.
A revival is not the result of certain
processes in history.
A revival cannot be organized.
A revival cannot be produced by any amount
of human zeal or endeavor.
It is rather a rending of the heavens.
It is a divine intervention amongst the affairs
of men.
It is God making bear His arm and
acting for His people sovereignly and omnipotently.
And that is why a revival, almost invariably,
I suppose invariably, confounds all human calculations.
It is not anticipated generally even by Christian
people when it comes.
It is God coming into the midst of
His people in such a way that human
plans are confounded and men are humbled in
the dust and there is an all-pervasive
consciousness that God has come amongst His people.
Putting the same truth in another way, we
can say that revivals are altogether independent of
man's support or of man's sympathy.
Speaking of the work of the Spirit of
God, Jesus says that Spirit, the wind, bloweth
where it lifteth.
Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not
tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.
By the Spirit, the resistible power, the most
improbable events take place.
Israel is withered like a valley of dried
bones.
Israel is brought out of Babylon as out
of their graves.
On the day of Pentecost, the men who
crucified Jesus Christ are brought into His church.
In the 16th century, the priests of the
Roman church, men such as Luther and Calvin,
they are made the very leaders of the
work of revival in the church.
It is that which is not expected by
men which God does.
That which cannot be hindered by men.
God sovereignly works according to His own decree.
A revival is a sovereign work of God.
Now we need to emphasize that because there
are a number of writers who deal with
the subject of revival and who treat it
as though revival can be traced to certain
natural causes in history.
For example, it is said that the Great
Awakening was stimulated by the emotional preaching of
the tenants and George Whitfield and others that
people were induced to conversion by being brought
into a state of alarm by the oratory
of such men.
Or again it is said that in the
18th century there were frequent revivals in America.
The American revivals of the later 18th century
took place in Kentucky and Tennessee and elsewhere.
It is so often said by secular writers
that these revivals were due to the primitive
conditions of the frontier.
People lived a very simple life, they had
no entertainment, they were near to death and
therefore they were very impressionable.
And when there was any religious influence at
all it was quite sufficient to bring them
into the kingdom of God.
And that sort of thinking comes even into
evangelical books.
There is a book, for example, on Jonathan
Edwards which says that Edwards' preaching on eternity
and on hell though it made such a
great impression upon the people of his day,
that type of preaching could not be expected
to influence people today because in the 18th
century people were much more conscious of their
mortality.
Life was much more brittle and frail and
therefore people were open to the exposure of
that kind of truth.
But that is no longer the case.
Now of course that sort of statement is
simply a denial of supernaturalism.
The 18th century American or Britisher was no
more disposed to fear God, no more disposed
to be convicted of sin than any sinner
in any generation of human history.
Revivals are not the product of any natural
phenomena or circumstance, they are God-sent and
irresistible in their power.
I think we ought to emphasize that.
Revivals do not come because there are catastrophes
or spiritual or physical dangers.
The great revival in New York in 1857
was preceded by an almost universal financial collapse
and it was said, wrongly said, that when
the wheels of industry stopped turning in New
York then men could listen to the Spirit
of God.
Now that's a naturalistic interpretation of what happened.
It wasn't because there was a financial collapse
that there was a revival.
There have been many financial collapses.
There have been many wars and famines and
disasters of all kinds and men can pass
through those things and come through them hardened
against the gospel.
They do not produce revival.
Samuel Miller, who was a minister in New
York in the 1790s, speaks of a great
pestilence which raged in New York at that
time and in his church alone I think
the figure was something like 200 people who
died from plagues of that period and in
the whole city the numbers of course were
much greater but he says that in all
those events he did not know of one
conversion.
It did not produce a revival.
Now, revivals then are the sovereign work of
God.
I have one more comment before I pass
this head.
In the last century evangelicals became responsible for
confusing the meaning of the word revival and
that confusion is with us today.
What happened was this.
People observed the fact that in every revival
there are generally certain common features.
For example, men receive a great hunger for
the word of God.
They cannot hear it preached too much or
too often and therefore in revivals churches find
it necessary often to increase their services.
There may be services not simply on Sunday
and once in the week but right through
the week.
People come and come to hear the word
preached and when the preaching of the word
is over it may be that some are
so struck with conviction and with grief that
they simply cannot go away.
They hope that someone will speak to them
some word of comfort or guidance.
They remain it maybe for hours after a
service is over.
Now these things were observed and men began
to say well if we could if we
could arrange such things well then perhaps we
could have a revival.
So it was arranged that there should be
protracted meetings the services going on through a
week or perhaps two weeks and after the
services after meetings where people were invited to
stay and the idea was that if we
can recapture the circumstances the accompaniments of revival
well perhaps we have a revival.
And so the idea came in that a
series of meetings of special meetings should be
called a revival.
And people began to say that we are
holding a revival and we are going to
have a revivalist to preach to us.
And what happened was that the whole idea
of revival was being changed.
The accompaniments of revival were there.
The prolonged meetings the after meetings but the
essence of revival that is the outpouring of
the Spirit of God was not there.
That cannot be arranged.
That cannot be put on to Cuban order.
Not so.
But the idea of the special meetings replaced
the idea of revival.
People arranged their revivals months in advance years
in advance.
We have a revival once a year.
They meant that they have a campaign once
a year which they called a revival.
And these people of course were not secular
liberals they were evangelicals.
And the tragedy is and perhaps we shall
return to this later in the week the
tragedy was that it was through evangelical belief
that the idea of revival the true idea
was pushed into the background.
Now this is not just a difference in
terminology.
It's a vital difference of thought.
The old leaders of revival in the 18th
century and the early 19th century they no
more thought of promoting or producing a revival
than they thought of raising the dead.
They knew they had to preach the word
but when and where the sudden Spirit of
God would be poured out in abundant measure
they did not profess to know.
That belonged to God.
That was His secret word.
Their duty was to preach His word.
But this new definition of revival was taught
by men who denied them.
Who said that revivals are the result of
laws which if we implement the laws we
will get the blessing.
That if a farmer if he sows the
seeds in the spring he knows he'll have
the hardest in the summer if we actually
said God will bless.
A revival is not a sovereign work of
God like a shower of rain from heaven
but it comes as men do and act
and God then will give the blessing.
And so the word revival became a word
associated not with the sovereign action of God
but with evangelistic zeal and effort and work
and labour and that was called revival.
Now words are important.
Where we live in Scotland it's a good
place perhaps to buy antiques and if you
came to Edinburgh and you were wanting to
buy antiques I don't suppose you would be
very pleased if you saw a shop sign
out antiques and later you discover that these
articles which were supposed to be antiques have
come straight from the manufacturer.
A word is important.
A word can change the whole meaning of
something.
This is what happened with the word revival.
Revivals then are a sovereign work of God.
My second general comment is this.
Although during this week we are to concentrate
upon the history of revivals I think it
is very necessary to say that no impression
should be given that periods of history when
there are no revivals are unimportant and insignificant.
That would be a gross mistake.
I suppose we all have naturally an interest
in the more sensational and in the more
successful and there is a danger that we
can concentrate our attention on particular facets of
church history and miss long stretches of history
because there is nothing in them which appeals
to us so much.
Now this is certainly a danger with the
subject of revivals.
Revivals are not the everyday general, usual work
of the Spirit.
But the everyday, general work of the Spirit
is of infinite preciousness but to the church
God is working to all age salvation in
the earth.
And it would be, and sometimes is I
think a mistake that is made to suppose
that revivals are the one period that are
of value and in between is a kind
of period of utter deadness and decline.
Sometimes that impression is unwittingly given by authors
who when they want to speak of a
revival they paint everything before the revival in
the darkest colour just as Rembrandt would paint
his pictures black or dark and then the
portrait would shine up.
Well that sometimes can be misleading.
It sometimes can be little work that the
Spirit of God will do it.
I don't need to tell you that men
like John Bunyan and Matthew Henry and Thomas
Boston in Scotland these were men who did
their work in a period of declension not
in a period of revival.
They toiled quietly in the background.
The blessing of God upon their work was
to come after their death more than in
their own lifetime.
That should caution us against the idea that
our attention should be fixed only on revival.
Let me take an illustration just from the
Christian life itself.
In the Christian life of the individual believer
there are long stretches which are not marked
by anything dramatic or sensational when we just
seek to do what God has called us
to do as Christians.
There are some events which stand out in
our lives which we never forget.
But for the most part the course of
our lives are as it were on an
even keel.
There are long stretches of time when there
is nothing dramatic.
Sometimes there are periods of suffering, of failure,
of setback, of depression.
There are kind of winters in the soul
and even in these periods God is working
strategically.
And it would be a very misguided Christian
who thought that the only thing of interest
in his life was the time when he
had some mountain peak experience.
That's not so.
God works through it all.
Now so in the history of the Church.
There are long periods of time when there
is no rending of the heavens, when there
is nothing altogether dramatic and extraordinary.
But these are not periods that we are
to ignore or to neglect.
I throw that out because I think it
is important.
In revivals God acts suddenly.
But that is not God's usual way of
acting.
Do you remember what James said in the
fifth chapter of his epistle?
Behold he says the husbandman waiteth for the
precious fruit of the earth.
He waits, being patient over it until it
receive the early and latter rain.
Be ye, says James, be ye also patient.
God is patient in the outworking of his
redemptive plan.
And therefore to suppose that only when God
works suddenly that only that is to be
considered by us that is a great mistake.
There was in Glasgow early in this century
a preacher by the name of G.
H.
Morris.
And he tells in one of his sermons
how when he was a student in Dundee,
on the River Tay in Scotland, he once
heard an address by Marconi, the inventor of
wireless telegraphy.
And Marconi at that time, of course, was
a name upon everyone's lips.
The amazing invention of being able to telegraph
messages over thousands of miles of ocean.
Marconi's name was being spoken of and heralded
everywhere.
And when he came to speak in Dundee
he came to a packed audience.
But Morris says that what impressed him more
than anything else was that Marconi told his
audience that what he had been able to
do was dependent upon the toil and the
labour of a student in Dundee forty years
before Marconi's own invention.
For, he says, without that man of genius,
my discoveries would have been impossible.
And Morrison says, I am certain there are
not five men in this church who could
tell me the name of that Dundee genius.
He is utterly forgotten.
No one ever thinks of him when the
message flashes across thousands of miles.
Yet, though no man owned his toil, he
was preparing a fame and a glory for
all countries.
Now that is true in the history of
this church.
Our Lord himself said, one man soweth and
another reaps.
And those that sow may be forgotten.
No one may own or remember them, but
their work in the sight of God is
as precious as that work of revival harvesting
which may come many years later.
My second comment then, do not let us
suppose, because this week we are studying revivals,
that these are the only things that we
should pick our attention upon in church history.
Thirdly and lastly then, we must underline the
fact that what happens in revival is only
a heightening of normal Christianity.
It is only a heightening of normal Christianity.
That is to say, that though revivals introduce
a wonderful change in vitality in the church,
the spiritual experience of the church in revival
is not different in essence to the spiritual
experience of the church in ordinary times.
Under the outpouring of the Spirit, feelings are
more intense.
Beliefs are held more firmly.
Convictions are deeper.
But the feelings and the convictions and the
beliefs are the same as exist wherever the
Spirit works in the history of the church.
It is a difference of degrees and not
a difference in kind.
Now that's a very vital state, perhaps more
so than some of you appreciate just at
this moment.
Let me give you a quotation from Joel
Hawes, who was a Connecticut minister in the
early last century.
He says, the theory of revivals is very
simple.
It is only the increase and the extension
to a number of sinners at the same
time of that influence of the Holy Spirit
which is employed in the conversion of each
individual sinner brought to repentance.
It is the increase and the extension to
a number of sinners at the same time
of the same work that is individually done
in one sinner when he is brought to
repentance.
Now, let me try in a word to
explain why that is so important.
In revival it is a common thing for
emotion to be so strong that men literally
fall to the floor.
Sometimes congregations after the preaching of the Word
of God in revivals they literally resemble a
battlefield.
People groan as though they've been shot.
Others are quiet and shaken and others weep.
Others sit in silence.
There is a shock that descends upon a
people and at other times in revivals there
is such a stirring of the spirit of
praise that men literally leap and dance and
rejoice in God.
Now, these things are not the essence of
revival.
I say they sometimes accompany revival.
But men can fall on the floor and
others can stand and shout and sing and
there's no revival at all.
The essential thing is to know that the
true work of the Spirit of God in
breaking men's hearts and leading them to Christ
that work is the same in the case
of an individual when there's no revival as
in the case of thousands of people in
a revival.
And what we've got to look for is
the essence of the thing.
And not to suppose that a revival is
some extraordinary and different kind of Christianity.
It is not that.
I close then this morning with a quotation
from another American preacher, Edward Payson.
And I think he gives us in a
nutshell what I've just been trying to say.
And with this as I say we shall
end.
Payson is preaching from the first book of
Kings chapter 19 on God heard in the
still small voice.
And he distinguishes between God speaking generally to
men through a congregation through the mouth of
a preacher and God speaking personally to an
individual's heart.
He says, when God speaks to men in
a general way only by his written words
or by the voice of his ministers, he
does not address them in this personal manner.
He addresses characters and classes, not individuals.
When this is the case, no man hears
for himself.
No man feels that he is particularly addressed.
Hence, large congregations often sit and hear a
message from God, while perhaps not a single
individual among them feels that the message is
addressed to himself or that he has any
personal concern in it.
But, it is not so when God speaks
with his still small voice.
Everyone to whom God thus speaks feels that
he is spoken to, that he is called
as it were by name.
Hence, while multitudes sit around him, he sits
as it were alone.
To him alone every word seems to come
absorbed in the truth thus presented in reflecting
on his own conduct, guilt, and danger, and
on the character and commands of God, he
is almost unconscious of the presence of his
fellow worshipers.
His attention is chained to the subject by
bonds which he cannot break, and sentence after
sentence, truth after truth falls upon his ears,
and is impressed on his conscience with a
weight, an energy, and an efficacy which omnipotence
alone can give.
And, when God thus speaks to the whole,
or to the greatest part of an assembly
at once, as he sometimes does when he
comes to revive his work extensively, these effects
are experienced, and these appearances exhibited by all.
This is a revival.
No scene on this side, the bar of
God, can be more awfully, overpoweringly solemn than
the scenes which such an assembly exhibits.
Then the Father of Spirits is present to
the spirits he has made, present to each
of them, and speaking to each.
Each one feels that the eye of God
is upon him, that the voice of God
is speaking to him.
Each one therefore, though surrounded by numbers, mourns
solitarily and apart.
The powers of the world to come are
felt.
Eternity with all its crushing reality opens to
view, and descends upon the mind.
The final sentence, though uttered by human lips,
comes with scarcely less weight than if pronounced
by the judge himself.
All countenances gather blackness, and a still solemn,
profound, and awful pervades the place, interrupted only
by a stifled song, or a half-repressed
sigh.
My heroes, such scenes have been witnessed within
a very few years, they have been witnessed
in hundreds of places.
This was Edward Paton.
My heroes, such scenes have been witnessed within
a very few years, they have been witnessed
in hundreds of places.