Realities of Revival III: Ordinary Means, Extraordinary Fruit

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is Teddy James. Good to have you with us,

Teddy. I appreciate being here, Jon. So, Teddy, why are you with me and not where you normally are behind the camera?

Because you'd like me to be uncomfortable? Yeah, that does make me feel good. No, but we are talking about revival and all of the different, you know, historical things, and so part of what

I want to do in being here is to stand in for the listener, to ask you questions, and to bring up, you know, these questions.

A lot of people are having questions about revival now. What is revival? How do we know when revival has come? What are the fruits of revival?

And so really to ask a lot of these questions, and so I think, you know, again, if you've missed the first two episodes of this series, let me encourage you.

We always provide links to those. Go back and listen to it. But, Jon, for somebody who's just jumping in now, let's begin with just a definition of what is revival.

Yeah. We've been using a couple of books from church history to help guide us, because we find that, generally speaking, it's the older writers who actually went through seasons of great reviving and, you know, reforming, that have been able to help us biblically get good roots for our thinking about these experiences.

So while we borrow help from believers who've went before us, it is the Scripture that we want them to take us to.

So I think that a simple summary definition, maybe even summarizing the simple definitions we gave last time, revival is

God drawing near to his people in an extraordinary way, or to an extraordinary degree.

We call this the manifest presence of God sometimes, or we, you know, we just might call it revival.

And that extraordinary nearness produces extraordinary results, both in the church among the believers, and also then out from the church in the lost community that's there.

In the early episodes, you mentioned that I had done a PhD in the

Puritan and 18th century evangelical revival era, and how they were interwoven in some ways theologically, and that's true, but I do want to say that while we appreciate those guys, and we appreciate reading good guys, that doesn't bring revival.

I remember talking with Richard Owen Roberts, who, as far as I know, is the man who has read the most on the topic of revival of anybody alive today.

I showed you his bibliographies that had thousands, I think 8 ,000 books listed on revival, and where you could find them in the world's libraries across the

West, and then another book with 6 ,000, where you could find those. So Roberts has spent, you know, more time than you and I have been alive, focusing on what has been written about revival, carefully and carelessly written about revival.

And when he was a young man doing this research, he said that a man in England said to him, he said, a young man reading all about revival isn't going to produce it.

And Richard Owen Roberts' response was really great, especially for a young man. He said, neither does ignorance of revival.

So I think that's a good perspective. We can have all the degrees or libraries on revival that we want, and that will not produce revival.

It won't even necessarily produce a heart in us that wants revival. We can become people who fall in love with concepts and with historical oddities, and then, you know, we don't seek the

Lord. But ignorance of revival is certainly not a help either, and so we want, for love of the

King, to study, to borrow a phrase from the psalmist, to study the days of the right hand of the

Most High. It's like times where God rolls up His sleeve and stretches out

His strong right arm and works in a way that shocks even those that have known

Him best. And one of the things that you brought out in previous episodes that we're going to spend more time in this episode talking about is how

God uses those ordinary means of grace to bring about revival, or to draw near to His people, to meet with His people.

But there's one thing that, before we really get into what those are and what that looks like, that we need to discuss, and it's this idea that has really crept into our culture, particularly in thoughts of revival, and that is the idea that we have to have special means to bring about revival, right?

So there has to be special meetings, there has to be special speakers, there has to be special music. I'm not saying those things are necessarily bad.

As my wife and I were talking about this podcast series, we both made the comment that if George Whitefield was in the town over, we would definitely be going to hear him.

But is that necessary? Do we have to have special means? I think that that has grown up in our country in particular, but you know, in the

West, and we tend to spread our views across the world through missions, that has grown up in the last hundred and fifty years, but was not there before.

And that has been rooted in the erroneous view that revival is something fundamentally different than the work that God does at other times, and that is wrong.

And if we can just get this fact into our minds, and it lays a path for our feet that makes sure that what we're doing, we're not wasting our time, and it keeps us from getting off a path, it kind of sets a fence along the edge, it keeps us from walking off a cliff in our, you know, good intentions and in our zeal for the

Lord, but doing some silly things that really will dishonor the Lord in the long run.

And that is what you mentioned, that revival is God's ordinary work.

It's the same categories that God has been doing in the work of redemption. It's the same categories that we expect as we read the

New Covenant promises. What did Christ, at the right hand of the Father and the

Father, what did the Father and Son send the Spirit to do on earth in light of the finished work of the

Son? And so we see things like conviction, and drawing, and convincing, and enabling a person to really believe what

God says on the page with all their being, you know, the kind of belief that can never be shaken.

We see the true new birth going from death to life, being indifferent and unresponsive to God, to suddenly being alive to God and the things of God.

We see, you know, the fruit of repentance, we see the fruit of faith, and that continues all through the

Christian's life, not just at the moment of conversion. You know, we see the evidences of being united to Christ in the fact that there is sanctification, or that daily transformation, that working outward based on what

God has placed within. We work it out into every area of life. We see perseverance of the saints.

So in each of these categories, these are all normal activities of God in saving.

When we come to revival, we expect to see the same things, but there is a difference.

It's not a different category. It's the same categories lifted to a very different level.

So ordinary categories of God's work, but now viewed in an extraordinary degree.

So conviction rising to a degree that perhaps we have never felt it before, not just in an individual, but across a church, across a town.

So, you know, all those categories extraordinarily seen being accomplished in a season of real revival.

Well, that makes total sense. I mean, God does use the ordinary means of grace like we've talked about, but the question comes down, what are those?

If we don't need special tactics, if we don't need special tools, then what are the ordinary things that we use every day that God uses in revival?

If revival is God's working in the ordinary categories that we expect in salvation and in sanctification, you know, then the ordinary means

He gives us will be sufficient, but we do want to use them in an extraordinary way.

So, for example, you know, there are prayer meetings that we have. We have prayer meetings here at the church, and we even have days of fasting in prayer, but that is on a fairly ordinary cycle.

Every Sunday morning we meet in the first hour as a time of corporate seeking of God in prayer.

But what happens if, you know, what happens if God burdens the church with a sense of the extraordinary need of our town?

Then we might say, the same method, prayer. All right, we're not going to have to bring in some specialist from somewhere who grew his church ten times, you know, the size, over one year.

Maybe we should just seek the Lord using the same tools that we've already had, so prayer.

So instead of the normal prayer meeting, we would say, for a season, we're going to come early, and we're going to give more time to seeking the

Lord, or we're going to not only have this, but we're going to add some prayer meetings during the week. Now, the issue with what we call the means of grace, so these tools that God has given us, the issue is always twofold.

One is, we're fundamentally lazy, and we don't like to work extra hard, we don't like to put the time in, unless someone can promise us as good

Americans that we will have success. You know, we're not going to go to extra prayer meetings each week if God isn't going to come in revival, and you know, on March 20th.

Right, unless there's a guarantee, you know, a return on investment. Yeah, A, B, and C is what we do, and then

God owes us D, and that is never the scriptural pattern. We are seeking the Lord because we have nowhere else to turn.

You know, He has words of life for His people. So we tend to not use the means of grace unless somebody says, oh, if you do this, you're guaranteed, and that's not true.

The other thing is, as good Americans, we're willing to work hard at something, and then the harder we work, the more tempted we are to believe that our hard work will accomplish it.

So, right use of the right means will produce the right results every time, and that was

Charles Finney's view, and he had some other views that were wrong underneath that, that were more dangerous, but let's just take that kind of a statement.

Right use of the right means. So if we pray more, then we have more blessing from God, and we have better life, better church, better families, and that is not necessarily the case.

The Scripture is full of examples where people gathered for prayer meetings and God was displeased with them. Isaiah chapter 1, where God says that when they lift their hands in prayer to Him, He would not respond.

Psalm 80, when it says that when they pray, He gives them tears to drink in good measure as His response to their prayers.

So using the means extra, more prayer, does not guarantee.

We use, we make an extraordinary use of the means because we feel an extraordinary need, or we feel that there is an extraordinary opportunity.

So two reasons. There's an extraordinary need, or there's an extraordinary opportunity. I forget which

Puritan it was that wrote this, but there was a Puritan who wrote a small pamphlet or a book, again

I forget, and the title was something like this, Seeking God in Finding Times.

And he was using Isaiah, where, you know, he talked about seeking the

Lord while He may be found. And the Puritans were very experientially minded people, and they said, look, there are times in the

Christian life where it seems like it is a particularly potent moment, you know, there is a door of opportunity.

God has stirred us, God is at work, you know, God is giving us an opportunity, and this is a time where we should seek

Him in an extraordinary way, because it's an extraordinary opportunity. So usually when the

Puritans, or the 18th century men, or some of the 19th century men, when they would see God begin to work in wonderful ways, they would respond by saying, let's give extra attention to God right now.

Samuel Rutherford said that we should be like a ship. Of course, in the 1600s, the ships were sailing ships, so we should be like a ship, that when the spring breezes really blow, the best thing to do is to put out all the sails, so put out every yard of sail.

And so we want to make sure that in times of extraordinary opportunity, and not just times of extraordinary need, we give extraordinary attention to seeking the

Lord by the normal means He's given us. So that may mean special prayer meetings, that may mean special focus in Scripture on certain topics that we feel would be very beneficial to the church at a time like this, that may mean fasting, that may mean memorization of passages that deal with seeking the

Lord. I mean, there are just so many things that we can think of, and sometimes what we've seen in history is churches have stopped doing all extra things.

Things that aren't wrong. But they have laid aside everything that is non -essential. Okay, no choir practice this week, no kids class this week, no this class, no this class.

What we're going to do is we're going to cry out to the Lord in prayer, and we're going to look at the

Scripture. And that's all we're going to do until the Lord helps us, or because the

Lord seems to be giving us a great opportunity. So seeking the Lord and finding times. Now, let me say a couple of things about that.

When we sense that this may be one of those times where there is an extraordinary opportunity, and it may be something as simple as a preacher that we know walks with the

Lord, and God tends to bless their services. I think of, you know, Paul Washer's efforts in preaching at conferences.

It seems to me that Paul's words throughout the past have carried great weight at these events.

So if I knew that Paul was preaching, you know, down the street at a church, or coming here, you know, we would have said to ourselves, this seems to be an extraordinary opportunity, so why not give extraordinary focus to seeking the

Lord? And so in prayer or Scripture study, we would do that. When we feel that there are extraordinary opportunities, two things we need to remember.

One is what I just mentioned. We want to throw out every inch of sail.

We want to prune out of our life any distractions, any fillers that would crowd in and prevent us from giving appropriate time to seeking the

Lord. So things you would normally do, hobbies, hanging out with friends, even things that the family might normally do for a season are set aside so as to give all attention to this, to get all the sail out.

It's removing distractions. Yes. Distractions in seasons of extraordinary opportunity or need really are extremely dangerous.

Second, sin. Any embrace of known sin is so dangerous.

It is always offensive to the Lord, but it is so particularly dangerous in a season of opportunity, you know, seeking the

Lord while he may be found, because it is, you know, it grieves, I think there is an aggravated sense to that sin that we have grieved the

Lord when at an extraordinary moment in our lives he is, you know, opening our eyes, working in our family, working in our church, working in us, and then we are tempted toward an old sin and we're careless, and the spirit is grieved.

Again, this may sound like a strange category to us, but just think of the New Testament, when Christ is coming to your town, and people are saying, that fella named

Jesus from Nazareth is, he's walking toward our town and he's been preaching and healing, and you've got sick people in your house, you know, you have a son that is lame, and you think, what an opportunity, you know,

I want to bring my son out. Now, if you got distracted and went and did something fun with your friends instead of taking your son to meet

Christ, pretty big consequences. Or if you decided to get into a fight with your wife and you had this pity party and you're not going to take your son to see

Jesus, pretty big consequences. So a simple illustration, but there are seasons in the Christian's life and in churches where God seems to be giving us a wonderful opportunity, and in those seasons we must guard against distractions and known sin if we are going to give all our cooperation, a generous cooperation, to the

Holy Spirit in seeking Him in extraordinary ways. It also seems that when a church seems to be entering those seasons of opportunities, of seasons where the

Lord may be found, there's still an idea that, okay, we have to have, you know, this is the time for a sermon on revival, this is a time for particular teaching, but that's not historically what we've seen.

Yes, I think that in the most careful and the most beneficial movements of revival that we've seen, we can think of the

Reformation, in a sense, as not just a reformation, but a real revivification of believers or churches.

Of course there was Reformation work going on at the same time, but if you think about the 18th century and the

Great Awakening here, under Jonathan Edwards and other men, and the Evangelical Revival, which is the same work, just a different branch in the

UK, under men like Whitefield, and this is a book of Whitefield sermons. I think they're out of print right now,

Crossway published them, there was a two -volume, it's a really, really great two -volume set, but I wanted to point out from this book what kind of things

Whitefield normally preached. Now, Whitefield preached a lot, but he left his literary remains with a fella who then lost them, and so we only have just a sampling of Whitefield's preaching, and then we have,

I think we have six volumes of his works, but when you think about how many sermons Whitefield preached, the fact that we have, you know, this few, it's quite shocking.

But the ones we have give a good picture of what kind of themes he talked about, so let me just mention a few.

The seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, that was a sermon he preached and God greatly used in the

Revival. Well, it's talking about the covenant of, you know, and the gospel, the first mention of the gospel, and the first mention, you know, after the breaking of the covenant of works that Adam did, of a merciful, you know, provision that one day, one of Eve's offspring would crush the serpent, and the serpent would strike at his heel.

Well, it's a picture of Christ and Satan, and so it's a theological sermon, basically, on the great covenantal work of redemption, and we wouldn't think that if a preacher announced, you know, at a big meeting in town, we're gonna have a revivalist show up this week and a special singer, and he's going to talk about the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, we would think, uh, nobody's going to care, but that's the kind of thing

God used. Or other topics that are that were more applicatory. Walking with God, or the great duty of family religion.

But by far, most of the sermons dealt with some aspect of the glory of Christ and His work.

So, Christ the best husband, or Christ, again, here's another one,

Christ the believer's husband, or the Lord our righteousness, or the righteousness of Christ, an everlasting righteousness.

The necessity and benefits of religious society, again, a very practical thing, you know, gathering with other believers.

But if you go through the 60 -ish sermons in the two volumes, what you find is this.

You just don't find Whitefield preaching sermons on revival. He preaches sermons about the bigness of God, the seriousness of sin, and the, you know, the extraordinary beauty and sufficiency of the work of Jesus Christ.

And his sermons, you know, it's like the last half of every sermon, it seems, is him drawing in a net, pleading with the believer to repent, and for the unbeliever to come for the first time.

And really, they are, you can, when you read these, although it's not the same as being there hearing him, you can see why he was such a popular pastor.

But so, same great themes that we would use to promote the ordinary work of a church, the ordinary work in the soul, are the themes that these men used, and God used them to promote the extraordinary work.

Let me give you two other examples. One is in the colonies. Jonathan Edwards, he pastored where his grandfather,

Solomon Stoddard, had pastored, and Stoddard had seen multiple, I think it was five waves of revival.

Now the difference between these and what we call the Great Awakening, which Stoddard had died before that, is that these were localized.

So the town of Northampton in Connecticut was affected, and these were genuine works of the

Lord, and they were extraordinary seasons, and they would come and go, you know, ebb and flow. Revival is not the norm for church.

But when Edwards was preaching, and really kind of where we mark maybe the beginning of the

Great Awakening in Edwards' area, and it was occurring under other men as well, and then Whitfield arrives, and he kind of unites the whole, he's kind of the glue that unites it all.

Edwards was not preaching on revival. Edwards was preaching on the doctrine of justification through faith in Christ, and God used that to just break the hearts of lost church members and stir the hearts of dull, sleepy

Christians. Another example is found in this book. This is called the Canva Slang Revival by The Banner of Truth.

The Scottish Evangelical Revival of the 18th century, and that's a strange title to me because there were more than, there was more than one revival in the 18th century in Scotland, but it's the kind of big one.

And it involved, again, George Whitfield, and the Erskines, and some other guys, even I think

Andrew Bernard's great -great -grandfather, or great grandfather, amazing story about that that we don't have time to talk about.

But this was a revival that happened outside the city of Glasgow, and there were two areas that both were experiencing this near each other.

One was Killside, and one was Canva Slang, and there were preachers, two men, particularly one in each, there was

McCulloch and also Robe, the last name of those two different pastors, and I believe it was

McCulloch, but it may have been Robe, who was preaching through a series on the doctrine of regeneration to church people.

And God used it to bring the beginnings of really one of the most extraordinary seasons of revival that Scotland had ever seen.

It really does stand out in many ways, and we'll talk about this book maybe in a later podcast, because Arthur Fawcett is a modern -ish writer.

I think this was first published in 1971, so I call that modern. All right, so he wasn't back then. But what he did was, he took the accounts that were put together by the two ministers in Canva Slang and Killside.

Now there were many, many ministers involved, but these two men, McCulloch and Robe, were kind of the fathers of the movement.

But what I want to point out in a coming episode is the carefulness of the men, and I'll just mention it here.

They put together about, starting at about two years after the movement started, up to six years after the movement.

Okay, so 1742 -43 was the peak. So even as late as 1748, these ministers went to the hundreds and thousands that over those years, those first couple years, which is really the time of the revival, you know, and they sat down with those that were illiterate, and they took an account of what

God did in their souls. Very precise account. What happened to you? How did

God do that? What passages? You know, what were the sins that were dealt with? How have you lived since then?

Some of them six years later. Now, for those that were not illiterate, they gave eight sheets of paper.

Now, paper was pretty expensive back then, but they would give eight sheets of paper, and they said, write out what

God has done. And those that were more expressive, maybe more capable in that way, would come back and say, can

I have more sheets? And then some who were less expressive, you know, would be able to fill out four sheets.

This was gathered, I think it's a two -volume set, and I don't know where you could get it. I don't know if it's a

Google Doc, but I wish I had the set. But this man uses those original sources in putting together this book on that movement.

But they, I know that the first volume, I believe, was 600 pages. So let's say you have about a thousand pages, a thousand pages of specific interviews with men and women and children who were converted two to six years ago in a revival movement, and they were still walking with the

Lord, and what were the changes, how did God work? Because both of those men knew that Scotland had seen many revivals, you know, like Wales, it had been called the land of revivals.

But what they noticed was, their forefathers, revivals had come with some regularity, and perhaps they expected that every person would know what revival was, and know what

God did during revival, and they didn't keep that kind of account. So these men felt that they would have been greatly aided as ministers leading in that movement, had they been better prepared, by having resources from the previous century when great revivals had come.

But because that specificity wasn't given to them through the centuries, they decided they would preserve the work of the

Lord in a very specific way of these accounts, and it is a real treasure to anyone wanting to understand what

God does in revival. And so, it's wonderful, but it really isn't any different than what

God does in the ordinary work of the church. Now, I don't mean what we think of as ordinary church, but I mean, if you read the

Bible and you say, this is ordinary church, which to us sometimes feels extraordinary. This is revival, all right?

Sometimes we're way down here, but in the ordinary work of the Spirit through the great means that he's given us in his church and through his church.

But those men kept those accounts so that in years to come, when men were faced with leading great movements, great seasons of grace, and men do lead those, just like men lead worship services.

You know, God does, in a measure, entrust those things to the hands of his church, and so if the leaders are wise, the fruit tends to be much healthier.

And I'm really glad they did. But since we can't get to those, this book here, it's a great place to start, because he was able to go back to the original accounts and give many of those in his book.

And that's fantastic. So, one of the things, kind of a theme that you are reiterating, and I want to just articulate again, is that these are ordinary means.

This is ordinary preaching. Now, I don't know about Robe and McCulloch. Robe and McCulloch.

McCulloch, all right. So I don't know about those guys, but I do know Whitefield being known for his preaching. There may very well be a pastor out there who says, yeah, but I'm not a

Whitefield. I can't preach like a Whitefield. I can't preach like a Robe and McCulloch. But it's not about a pastor's ability to preach.

Yeah, I forget which one it was. It's just been so long since I've read through these. One of them was called,

I think it was McCulloch, and that's if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but you know, we'll have Scottish friends that'll weigh in and graciously let us know that we blew it.

I think it was McCulloch. He was nicknamed the ale minister, the beer preacher, we would say today.

Oh, he's the beer preacher. Not because he was a drinker, you know, and known as a drunk, but because he was a very godly, very hard -working preacher who was not very gifted.

He was slow of speech, you know, he could prepare his sermons and he would teach biblical truth, but he was not, you know, quick -witted in the pulpit.

He was not an orator like that, and so his sermons tended to be kind of belabored and kind of dull, you know, in the sense of naturally dull, not spiritually bad, but naturally he just lacked pulpit gifts, and he was the man that God used to begin one of the greatest revivals in Scotland.

You know, God calls those great truths preached by a godly man who was doing the best he could, but he was just not an exciting preacher until God drew near.

You know, but they called him...I don't think...I think I forgot to mention why they called him the ale preacher, ale minister, and that's because when he would preach, some of the husbands in church would sneak out the back and go to the tavern, which was closed, but they would go to the tavern and get an ale while the preacher is preaching, and the women and children, you know, behaved themselves and stayed in church, and they would sneak off and then come back later.

Now when we talk about these ordinary means and ordinary kinds of work that God does, obviously one of the things that is important is to ask ourselves, do

I understand the ordinary work of the Spirit in bringing people to Christ, and growing them in Christ, and using them for Christ?

Because if I don't understand those categories biblically, if I don't understand not just the theological doctrines that kind of shape those categories, but if I don't understand, if I don't have an experiential awareness of this is how

God does this, you know, I see God doing this in people, I see God doing it in me, which is generally other than Scripture, one of the clearest ways we get our thinking right is that, well,

I know how God has dealt with me through the Scripture by the Spirit. If we are bad at understanding the normal work of God, those categories on the normal level, if we're bad at that, then we will be extraordinarily bad at judging the extraordinary work of God in these categories.

So TJ, when you think of ordinary work of the Lord in a soul, what kind of things are we talking about?

Well, there's the conviction of sin, there is the bringing about of confession of sin, there's seeking for Christ, there's reading of the

Scripture, there's prayer, family worship, and then you have the the corporate, right? Worshipping together, the normal preaching, singing hymn songs and spiritual songs.

Yeah, so those are the normal things. Here's some questions that came to my mind.

What kinds of things does God do to bring the spiritually indifferent to be spiritually concerned, you know?

And how is that different from the way God brings the spiritually concerned, the terribly convicted and brokenhearted, to peace?

I brought to bear on those people at different times. You wouldn't, you know, bring to a person who's indifferent, sitting in the church just bored to death, you wouldn't bring him comforting, comforting words, you know, don't worry,

God loves you so much and Christ is sufficient. The man doesn't care. But you also probably wouldn't, to the person who's weeping over sin while you're preaching, you probably wouldn't come down from the pulpit each week and add more conviction to them, you know?

Your tears are polluted, your unbelief is worse than you imagine, and you know, so different truths applied by the

Spirit to different conditions. Well, we see Jesus doing the same thing in the New Testament. Different people He spoke to in different ways and brought out different truths to them.

Yes, the same great message that brings a man from here to here, but depending on where you're at on that path,

Christ dealt with them differently. So we want to know from Christ's example, from the example of the

Apostles, well, what does that look like in practice, so that if I'm in a church and the

Lord begins to really convict people, and there are a lot of individuals in the church that need help, and I'm not talking about just for pastors, but for older Christians, how am

I going to help them? Things like this. When the Bible says, bring forth fruit of repentance, what does that look like?

What is fruit of repentance? You know, what is fruit of faith? How are emotional responses to be judged?

What are emotions that we should be grateful to see in people, even though that's not enough, but it's good, and there are some emotions or expressions of emotion that we are not encouraged when we see them.

Emotion by itself is never enough, but some emotions are appropriate, you know, as men and women and young people are brought face -to -face with the realities of God and the realities about themselves, then there will be emotional and sometimes physical responses.

We think of Peter falling on his face before Christ, you know. We have so many examples through history.

How do we know when that is legitimate or illegitimate, you know?

Give you another question. How can I tell if my experiences that I'm having in church during the service are biblically valid or biblically validated or not?

Here's another question. What guides are there in the

Scripture that help me to be able to desire

God with all my being and not get off track?

Is the only safe place for a Christian, when we think of, you know, not becoming, you know, not getting off into error when we're desiring the

Lord and seeking the Lord, is the only safe place a place of a restrained, dull heart that's not very hungry for the

Lord? You know, so you think passions or emotions or desires, you know, if they get too high, well that's the danger point, and then you get into error, so keep the desire sedated?

Or are there other means in Scripture that guide the desire of a believer so that you can desire

God with as much fiery passion as a human is capable of, and you will still be safe because you are following or you are kept by these banks, you know, the river can be raging, but it's within the banks.

But what are they? So I'm just throwing out those questions without answering them, because we can talk about them more in another episode, but if we are poor at understanding how to apply the

Bible to the normal Christian experiences as God does a normal work in souls, then we will be extraordinarily poor if God brings revival, and we are finding people having extraordinary experiences and extraordinary emotions, and we think,

I don't know what to do. Do I just say this is good? Do I say it's bad? How do

I judge between them? Yeah, well, if you have no experience in looking at those things and thinking through those things in the ordinary means, you know, just like these guys with a canvas link, if we are so inexperienced with those ordinary means, then when it does come time for God to draw near in an extraordinary way, and again, it's the same means, but to a higher degree.

We keep saying that because it's so important. When those higher degrees come, everything is amplified, and if our lack of discretion and lack of judgment, lack of careful thinking is present in an ordinary means and on an ordinary degree, then it's amplified as well.

Well, we'll pick that up next week as we look at how the Scottish ministers in 1840, in that book,

The Revival of Religion, that we mentioned in a previous podcast, how they looked for the fruit of the work of God in revival.

What did they expect would occur, and how did they judge in their minds whether this was really a fruit of the work of the