As Edwards Was — E.A. Johnston

Seminary Training and Dependence on the Holy Spirit

I was sitting in a seminary classroom and the preaching professor was teaching us students about voice projection in preaching. And a young man sitting across from me raised his hand and asked the professor the following question.

He said, excuse me professor, but what you're saying is that our success as preachers relies on how we use our physical powers. But when I study revival and see men God has used in revival like Jonathan Edwards, I find that men like Edwards relied on the Holy Spirit when they preached.

Then the young man stopped talking and waited for the professor's response. And what I witnessed was a murder because that haughty professor in a very condescending tone came down hard on that seminary student in an attempt to crush all the spiritual life right out of him.

In a disgusting voice, the professor mocked, are you Jonathan Edwards? Do you think you could ever preach like him? And I saw the wind go out of the sails of that young seminary student who knew more about preaching than that egg-headed professor.

There's a reason why seminary is often called cemetery. Some of them will drain all the spiritual life right out of you before you ever get a pulpit of your own. But that young man saw something in his study revival, friends.

Jonathan Edwards and Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Under Jonathan Edwards. And it can't be ignored. When Edwards preached, all hell broke loose as souls were brought to the very brink of eternity to face the terrible God of Eternity. I spent a fruitful afternoon years ago in the town of Enfield, Connecticut, where I found the stone marker on the plot of land where once stood the meeting house that Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, wherein I witnessed recorded that ye minister had to desist from preaching, for he was no longer heard over the shrieks and cries in the meeting house.

It was said that, as Edwards described the torments of hell in that sermon, that his hearers felt the soles of their shoes being warmed from the rising flames below them. A strong man had to hang on to the pillars in the church aisle so not to be dragged down to hell.

Well, I walked over that batch of grassy ground where that meeting house once stood, and as I paced back and forth over the length and breadth of that parcel of sacred ground, my thoughts ran back to a time in the colonies in New England when preachers were true to the souls of men.

The Full Counsel of God and Human Ruin

Men like Edwards and Gilbert Tennant and George Whitefield held up the full counsel of God and hewed sinners down with the double-edged sword of a cutting gospel that proclaimed a God who was a dread sovereign, in whose hands rested salvation.

God could give it, or withhold it, and still be a just God. They presented a God high and lifted up, and they portrayed man in all his misery, of his ruined condition, helpless, bankrupt, blind, and miserable, and on his way to a well-deserved hell of darkness and damnation.

The Fear of Offending Hearers

But we preachers today don't know how to preach like that, and we would be hesitant to risk offending our hearers. But those men like Edwards, under the anointing of the Spirit of God, preached soul-searching sermons that were disturbing and cutting and awakening, they shined the spotlight of the Holy Spirit on the sinner's heart until he cried out in alarm.

Like the people in that meeting house in Enfield, Connecticut, in 1741, as I walked that ground over and over and over again, and my eyes fell on that stone marker commemorating that historical occasion, tears filled my eyes and an ache got heavy in my heart as I lifted my eyes up to heaven and I prayed, Lord, why can't we preach like that today?

Praying for Revival in the Present Age

And the thought came to me, it's not so much that we can't preach like that, as much as it is we won't preach like that way, for today we're afraid to. The psalmist cried, turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.

I believe, friends, God wants to send revival in our day. He is looking for the right instruments for his glory. When that seminary professor told that young man he was no Jonathan Edwards, he was right on one account, but you don't have to be Jonathan Edwards to be used of God like Jonathan Edwards.

Preaching the Doctrines of Grace Without Fear

All you need to do is to be you, you, surrendered to the same God Edwards was, filled by the same Holy Spirit Edwards was, preaching the same doctrines of grace as Edwards was, warning men about the torments of hell as Edwards was, using the old gospel as a double-edged claymore as Edwards was, and not fearing man, but only fearing God like Edwards was, and you go out, brother preacher, and stand on your Bible, and count on your God, and all hell will begin to pop, just like the preaching of Edwards was.

I've seen it happen in a church, friends, where God vindicates his word like he once did under faithful preaching as Edwards was.