“Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.” In Habakkuk 2:2 were the words Charles Finney used in his Friday night lectures in the 1830s, which later were published into book form with immense success.
Revivals in history were nothing new under the sun, either in America or worldwide, when Charles Finney used this text to open his sermon. However, the methods to cause the revival were indeed much different. Finney always felt that preachers had a responsibility to cause revivals or “excitements” to happen under the auspices of the Holy Spirit. Due to the Fall of Adam and Eve and Original Sin, no man would do the work of God unless the Almighty so motivated him to do so. Revivals motivate man to do God’s work. Therefore revivals are necessary for the continuation of the Gospel. History bears out the facts that many of Christianity’s greatest social works resulted directly from one revival or another.
In his sermon “What a Revival of Religion Is” Finney points out that God shapes “the course of events so as to produce another excitement, and then pours out his Spirit again to convert sinners”. He goes on to say this cycle continues until “religion would decline, and the nation would be swept away in the vortex of luxury, idolatry, and pride”. He adds a few paragraphs later “ It is altogether improbable that religion will ever make progress among heathen nations except through the influence of revivals. Attempt is now being made to do it by education and other cautious and gradual improvements. But so long as the laws of mind remain what they are, it cannot be done in this way. There must be excitement sufficient to wake up the dormant moral powers, and roll back the tide of degradation and sin”.
Finney goes on to explain the results of a revival. These include: Sinners become convicted of their sin and once again become interested in serving God, backslidden Christians renew their obedience to God, practicing Christians become emboldened in their faith to bring salvation to the entire world, as their faith is reenergized, and finally individual congregations go through similar stages of repentance and renewal, as sin is once again abandoned and virtuous living is taken up.
These revivals or reformations, as they can also be called, have occurred over and over again in the history of the Church. The Old Testament is full of examples of Jewish exile and reformation. Protestantism was ushered in during the 14th to 16th century as a part of a revival under the likes of Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, Huss, & Wycliffe. The First Great Awakening of the 1720-30s under the influence of John & Charles Wesley and George Whitefield erupted in England, and arrived on colonial shores about the same time through the influence of Theodore Frelinghuysen and Jonathan Edwards. The revival movement continued off and on for decades to include James McGready’s new development of the camp meeting in Kentucky in 1797, six years after the death of John Wesley, thus beginning America’s Second Great Awakening, which continues for several decades right through Charles Finney in the 1830s.
Revival camp meetings in 1800-1801 brought sinners from Ohio, Tennessee & Kentucky to various sites in Kentucky to hear different Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist preaching teams expounding repentance simultaneously on different sides of the camp. A Methodist circuit preacher explained the sight, “ The noise was like the roar of Niagara. The vast sea of human beings seemed to be agitated as if by a storm. I counted seven ministers, all preaching at one time, some on stumps, others in wagons and one standing on a tree which had, in falling, lodged against another.” A Rev. Hoge further described the scene, “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!” Pages of history recount similar scenes of the Pentecost like work of the Holy Spirit as sinners come under conviction of their lives errors.
1820s saw the conversion of Charles Finney, who nearly immediately began his revivalist work who occupied the remainder of his life, culminating is his founding of Oberlin College from which evangelists and pastors were trained.
Canada saw a revival in 1857 led by the Palmers which spread to New York’s Fulton Street in 1858 under the leadership of Jeremiah Lanphier, in which 50,000 of the city’s 800,000 population were brand new Christian converts. Other research shows that the 1858-1859 reformation converted at least one million Americans out of a population of thirty million, and another million Christians rededicated their lives to Christ. That same revival then moved to Ireland bringing in 100,000 converts to Irish churches, spreading still further into Wales, Scotland, and England.
The later 19th century ushered in the likes of Timothy Dwight, the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, Dwight Moody, Lyman Beecher, Peter Cartright, and in later years Aimee Semple McPherson and Billy Sunday.
Besides hundreds of thousands of Christian spiritual conversion, these revivals sent shock waves through both the social and political fabric of America. Reform movements, which resulted from the return to Biblical roots, included those related to temperance, anti-dueling, slavery abolition, governmental & constitutional issues, prison & mental health reform, and other moral endeavors, the likes of which lasted for decades, along with the founding of the American Bible Society in 1816 and multiples of new denominations, such as the Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, and the Seventh Day Adventists.
Today we are living off the leftovers of those moral reformation movements. And those leftovers are becoming increasingly stale, and in short supply. Is America sufficiently heathen to merit a revival? I heartily think so! It is doubtful that any Christian reader here would disagree with that opinion. A look around in any direction assures one of sin and evil. Satan today is having a field day in American society. While church membership may not look overly affected, Christians, devout or otherwise, are bombarded on all sides in our secular society, and sometimes within the churches themselves. Enumerating examples of seemingly acceptable societal practices of adultery, fornication, homosexuality, and euthanasia here seem unnecessary with the exception of saying one statistician believes that one third of all born again American Christians believe abortion to be acceptable. Personally, I find numbers like that scary. To paraphrase Alexis de Tocqueville - America will cease to be great should her people cease to be good. America has reached its Rubicon, as we have elected over and over again supposed conservative Bible believing politicians to no avail. Our intentions are good, but our efforts are failing. Perhaps it is time for change of attack. Maybe we can’t save ourselves, and we should return to our basic beliefs – allow the Holy Spirit to do the work of reforming hearts and minds for us! Then, and only then, do what we do best. Teach those new believers the absolute doctrinal truth of the Biblical way, rather than the world’s moral relativism!
Why is the Spirit tarrying in our present age? Perhaps it is because we haven’t asked! Or more pointedly, we don’t see our need. Rev. 3:17 description of the Laodicean church could well describe us today, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing – and do you not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked”. Within the comfortable confines of our church homes, we are reaping the results of our lukewarm attitude.
While revivals were a frequent event in earlier American history, none have appeared on the scene in any recent memory. Other than Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, or Ken Hagin, few, if any, revivalist type public figures have emerged over the past fifty plus years with the possible exception, some historians say, of the 1960s Jesus Movement and the Charismatic Renewal of the 1970s. America is well overdue for a major Christian revitalization. I’m ready! Are you? I would like to challenge the Biblical believers to ramp up their prayers on behalf of our nation by daily vigorously & earnestly imploring our heavenly Father to send his Holy Spirit as at Pentecost to reawaken this nation, and the world, to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, with a subsequent return to our ecclesiastical, political, and societal Bible based roots. Secondly, we need to resurrect the church wide prayer meetings of previous days. We must rekindle groups like William Carey and his friend, who for seven or eight years met monthly to pray for revival, and God answered those prayers mightily by sending the Second Great Awakening. And, thirdly, we must continue to wholeheartedly support Christian education groups, like American Vision, so as to have the necessary support system in place when the Christian reformation comes. Millions of Christians, who have never been taught the foundations or workings of civil government, will need the information imparted to them. American Vision is the group to spearhead this effort.
Toward the conclusion of his revival article, Charles Finney exhorts the Christian church to “put forth efforts to produce a revival” by uniting “now in a solemn pledge to God, that you will do your duty as fast as you learn what it is, and to pray that He will pour out His Spirit upon this church and upon all the city this winter”.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me” (Rev. 3:20). Can we Christian Americans do any less?
Postscript: With the 400th anniversary of Jamestown much in the news, J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine, met with a group of Christian leaders upon this subject of revival. In an article posted on the Internet by Bruce Tomaso on April 28, 2007, he reported that an “Assembly 2007” event was scheduled in Virginia Beach, VA. Tomaso related that “Billy Wilson who directs the International Center for Spiritual Renewal in Cleveland, Tenn., asked us to envision what a 21st century revival would look like if (1) we commit ourselves to united prayer and fasting, and (2) God answers with fire. I certainly don’t have the full picture of what this will look like, but I share these insights with the group in Virginia and I’ll now pass them along to you”. His report had some interesting points to consider, especially for us mainstream American Christians, so that we don’t impede the work of the Holy Spirit when He comes in fire and glory. We will be surprised, and maybe offended, by the revival work of God, with some denominations not so accepting of the Holy Spirit’s work! A revival will be controversial – it will disrupt our lives and churches, and cause us Christians much work in teaching & serving these new Christians, making the entire process “gloriously messy”, necessitating we the Church to help mend the thousands of new converts who come from socially broken backgrounds. Tomaso points out the churches rejected the hippy Jesus culture of the 1960s, and he hopes we the Church don’t make that mistake again, or the mistake of dismissing the large influx of what undoubtedly would be non-white converts in our suburban churches. Many previous revivals saw multitudes of miracles. We should be prepared to see God’s might & power on the same grand scale. With the traditional roles of women broken in our age, we will see more and more women involved in this movement. Today’s churches will need to understand flexibility more than ever before – innovation will be important, as well as technology with the possibility of the Gospel spreading far and wide in minutes rather than weeks or months. And possibly the most important, this next reformation will drown us in “brokenness, humility, and conviction” because of our lukewarm approach and half hearted appreciation of the gracious Gospel message of our God of The Universe
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