Standing Against Charles Finney | Clip from Final Warning

And Asahel Nettleton is not as well-known in our day as he was in the 19th century. But in the 19th century, he really was one of the key ministers, especially for the United States. Particularly, not only because of his own preaching and the significant revivals that occurred under his ministry, but because of the leadership he gave to those that stood against Charles Finney and the new theology, the new methods that were creeping up as the older, and we believe, much more biblical theology was being set aside.

So let me just give kind of a quick sketch of his day and then just a little bit about Nettleton. Nettleton was born in 1783 and died in 1844. Now, that life basically covers the time of the Second Great Awakening, which started around late 1780s, early 1790s, and lasted into the 1840s, depending on kind of how you're measuring it.

This is a significant revival for a number of reasons. One reason is that it lasted so long it affected the fabric of our early nation significantly. It's much longer than the Great Awakening, the First Great Awakening, lasted.

Second, it covered more territory. The First Great Awakening tended to be focused only in the New England area, and the Second Great Awakening covered much more territory. But while it was a significant movement, it was a divided movement.

There was a lot of careless enthusiasm and zeal among some of the young leaders, and men like Edwards were not there to kind of guide them. And so we do find in this movement, especially in the frontier regions, zeal without biblical knowledge.

And so the excesses eventually lead to damage of the reputation of the Lord and of the revival. But primarily, as I mentioned, in the 1820s, Finney's views and how different his views were than biblical, Protestant, and historical evangelical theology, how different he was really starts to be seen when he discusses man's ability basically to regenerate himself, to save himself apart from that extraordinary grace of the Lord.

So grace was helpful, but not essential. If it was essential, Finney argued, as a lawyer, then God requiring us to believe and repent when belief and repentance required God's help, God's gifts, you know, the work of regeneration.

Finney said that that would be unfair. So approached it as a lawyer, had some bad, you know, assumptions right at the beginning, and led to a whole system that really we still feel the ill impact of in our day.

Probably the most significant for our nation, the most significant wrong turn for evangelicals occurred during this revival. And so for that reason, a lot of people are not very excited about the Second Great Awakening, but it was a real work of the Lord.

Asahel Nettleton was converted and wanted to devote himself to foreign missions. For a while, he preached in Connecticut, and there, as a young man, he saw firsthand the division between, you know, the Finney and the Reformed side, and he saw the damage that was doing.

He also saw the damage done by excesses and just careless, you know, zeal. And early on in his ministry, he really did adopt a very wise and balanced biblical approach to preaching and evangelizing and really to the work of a revivalist in the best sense of that word.

After a number of years of preaching, he was affected by typhus, and his health was permanently impaired. Never was he able to become a foreign missionary, so he devotes the rest of his life. And for 30 years, he travels and preaches.

Now, he doesn't travel and stay only one week. We were discussing before the podcast how long does he stay. It seems like we remember a pastor telling us that it was nearly a year in each place, but we can't give you the exact date on that, and we both have lost our biographies on Asahel Nettleton, which reminds me, if you want to read a good biography on Nettleton, Andrew Bernard, the young man, the Scottish pastor who wrote a biography of Robert Murray McShane, also wrote one on Nettleton, and in the show notes, you can find a link to that.

Banner of Truth still publishes that. But as Nettleton went from place to place, and he did stay for some period as the work of God progressed, he really becomes kind of the George Whitefield of the Second Great Awakening.

After 30 years of being wonderfully used by the Lord, he passes away, and he is noted by his contemporaries for his simple, direct, unflowery, penetrating sermons. And I think that this sermon on Proverbs 29 .1 is a wonderful example of that.

We were both talking about how this sermon is not as kind of complicated as some of the others, and because of that, some of the things he says really are quite penetrating. Thank you for watching the clip.

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