The Awakening of 1792 Onward - Part 4 — J. Edwin Orr

Revival and the British and Foreign Bible Society

Like Lisa Burden. Out of that came so many things. For instance, a little Welsh girl during the revival walked 30 miles on her bare feet to try and buy a Bible. She got there, they're all sold. She returned in tears.

Thomas Charles, one of the leaders of the revival in Wales, was so concerned he took his carriage and went up to London to beg people to print Bibles. Nobody seemed willing to do it, so he formed his own committee and it was called the British and Foreign Bible Society, the first of the Bible Societies.

Revival at Williams College and the Haystack Commitment

That came out of the revival. You remember I said that in the colleges conditions were bad? At Williams College in Massachusetts they had a mock commune to make fun of Jesus Christ. Christians were so few on campus in those revolutionary days that they kept their minutes in code and met in secret like a communist cell.

A group of them who were revived met under a haystack, sheltering from the rain, and promised God they'd go anywhere in the world he would send them. You say, well that happens at Forest Home, that happens at lots of camps.

The Formation of American Missionary Societies

In those days there were no missionary societies to take them. These young men finished their studies and then went down to Boston to the headquarters of their denomination and asked to be sent overseas as missionaries.

Someone said, who do they think they are? Another man said, we don't have money to do it. One man said, if God has spoken to these young men, I think we should help them. So they formed a committee called the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

That was the first American missionary society. The first missionary they sent out was Adoniram Judson. He went to India, then to Burma. On his way to Calcutta he became convinced of Baptist principles and asked William Carey to baptize him in Calcutta.

Rather embarrassing to go out as a congregational missionary and become a Baptist on the field. So he sent some of his friends back to raise money and out of that came the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.

One denomination after another, all the missionary societies of the denominations came out of that revival. There were so many other things that were done that all you could say was, the place had been completely transformed.

The Christianization of the Young United States

George Baxter from Philadelphia went up to Kentucky, that place which had been so wicked in its ways, and he said, I have never come across such a moral community in all my life. The whole of the young United States was changed.

Young people were converted on the frontier, went back to these colleges where they were having religious revivals right along, and there they trained for the ministry, went out as missionaries, or became pastors of home churches, and the young United States became a comparatively Christian country.

Most important, its leading edge, the frontier, was Christianized as it moved west. In 1860, of 180 colleges in the Middle West, 144 had been started by evangelists and revivalists. It all came out of that revival.

The Long-Term Course of the 1792 Awakening

Now, some people may say, how long did the revival of 1792 continue? Some say for 50 years. Unbroken revival. Sometimes, of course, the tide goes out and it has to come in again, but in this case, 1830, there came another revival that strengthened the work.

But that's another story. All I'm trying to tell you is this. The great awakening of 1792 came about because in Britain they formed a union of prayer, and because in America they formed what they called the concert of prayer.

Prayer and Spiritual Awakening

Prayer is the least of what we can do to bring about a spiritual awakening in our time. May God grant it. Amen.