April 3, 2018 Show with Kurt M. Smith on “Jonathan Edwards & His Defense for the Great Awakening”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday. On this third day of April 2018,

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I'm delighted to have back on the program, Kurt M. Smith, who is an author and the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama, and today we are going to be discussing

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Jonathan Edwards and his defense for the Great Awakening, and many of you may be scratching your head wondering why the

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Great Awakening needed to be defended, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Kurt M.

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Smith. Well, thank you, Brother Chris. It is great to be back. And for the sake of our listeners who have not heard you on the program before, why don't you give a brief description of Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama.

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Absolutely. Providence Reformed Baptist Church is actually a new church start.

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We were constituted back in August of 2016, and so we're just in the infant stages of a church plant, but we are a confessional

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Baptist church holding to the Second Lent of Baptist Confession of 1689. We also are affiliated with the

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Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America, which is ARPCA for short, and where we're located, we're located in north central

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Alabama. We're roughly 40 minutes northeast of Birmingham, and we're in what's called the

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Appalachian foothills, and so we are a Reformed Baptist church that is in a very rural community, but we're only 17 minutes away from some regional cities and suburbs that are all connected with Birmingham.

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Great. And I was actually surprised, speaking to a mutual friend of ours,

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Mike Gaydosh, who used to live right near Birmingham, I was surprised to hear that Birmingham is a relatively new city historically.

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I don't mean it started a few months ago, but I mean historically it's not a really old city as far as the longevity of the

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United States is concerned. Yeah, that's true. That's very true. If I'm not mistaken,

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I believe Birmingham was started in the 1870s. I would need to go back and check that again, but I do think that that is correct, although the area that is called

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Birmingham was an area that was already being very much populated during the 19th century, before the

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Civil War and then of course following. But yeah, Mike is correct. Birmingham is not that old of a city.

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Well, if anybody wants more information about Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain in Alabama, you can go to prbc1689, for the 1689

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London Baptist Confession of Faith, dot org, prbc1689 .org.

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And you never know, you may eventually wind up having somebody visit you. I was very pleasantly surprised not long ago, just a few weeks ago, when

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I mentioned in passing that the brother of a family in Grace Reformed, I'm sorry,

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Grace Baptist Church, where I am a member here in Carlisle, which is a Reformed Baptist Church, but it's just called

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Grace Baptist Church, a member of the family in this congregation just planted a church in Perth, Australia, Emmanuel Reformed Baptist Church.

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And I just happened to mention that in passing. And a listener in Perth, Australia, visited and is convinced that that is now his church home.

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This just happened a few weeks ago. Oh, wow, that's great. So you never know, it might not have happened yet, but you never know who may be walking through the doors of the

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Pine Mountain Reformed Baptist Church, or the Providence Reformed Baptist Church, I'm sorry, in Pine Mountain, Alabama.

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Well, this is an interesting subject that we have today. Jonathan Edwards and his defense for the

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Great Awakening. I'm assuming that most of our listeners know who Jonathan Edwards was, but I am very often surprised about how many new

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Christians are listening to the show, and in addition to that, how many non -Christians listen from time to time.

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So give us a very brief overview of who Jonathan Edwards was. Sure. Well, Jonathan Edwards, he lived between the years 1703 to 1758.

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He has been given the praise as being perhaps the greatest of all

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North American thinkers and philosophers. But above all, of course, he was a

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Christian thinker. He devoted his life from the time of his conversion in 1721 to know and glorify

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God through Jesus Christ, and to spread such a divine passion to his generation and beyond.

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And the application of that driving devotion in Edwards would be established by God's providence on several different fronts.

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First and foremost, he was a faithful husband and father to a family of 12. He was a pastor of 23 years in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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That was from 1729 to 1750, where he sought to recover and preserve obedience to the whole counsel of God in a society which had largely drifted away from this foundation.

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He was also an earnest evangelist and a missionary to an Indian outpost in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

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That was during the years 1752 to 1757. And lastly, his most lasting legacy has been his theological writings, which supported and defended a very robust Orthodox evangelical

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Calvinism over against what was in his day an encroaching

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Pelagian and Arminian way of thinking in New England. Edwards' greatest spiritual heirs, though, and this is what really is surprising to a lot of believers that begin to study him, is that his greatest spiritual heirs were actually

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Baptists on both sides of the Atlantic during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

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For Baptists in England, Jonathan Edwards aided their exit from Hyper -Calvinism by his treaties on the human will.

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And for Baptists in America, Edwards' theology of grace in relation to conversion served as what you might call a century facing the slough of Arminianism.

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So yeah, his greatest spiritual heirs, though he was a Pato Baptist, he was a

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Congregationalist minister, but yet it would be the Baptists that would gain the most from him.

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Now, this may be too complicated a question to fit within our two -hour time length right now, especially since we have another theme, but there are

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Reformed Christians, who I would not consider Hyper -Calvinists, who do have a problem with Jonathan Edwards' understanding of the human will that you just mentioned.

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Is there any way that you could summarize what that might be? Why there is a conflict even amongst

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Reformed Christians who are not Hyper -Calvinists, at least the way I think

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Hyper -Calvinists would be predominantly defined? Right, yeah.

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I had to think about that. Edwards' treaties on the freedom of the will,

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I'll say from my own personal experience having read it, it is a difficult read.

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I mean, you have to really work hard to get through it. He does tend to work a lot from philosophy as well as theology, but as far as those in the

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Reformed community that have had some resistance to his position on the freedom of the will, to be very honest,

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I don't know who. I have not heard of such a resistance.

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Okay, I'll tell you off the air then. But it may have...

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Well, I'll tell you this. The person that he influenced the most, as far as the

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Baptists among those Baptists in England, that his writing on the freedom of the will influenced the most was none other than Andrew Fuller.

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And what Andrew Fuller saw in Edwards' treaties was basically an echo of what

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Augustine had taught, of what Luther had taught, and that is basically that man, even in his sinful, unregenerate state, his will is free, but his will is determined by his nature.

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Right. But what Edwards emphasized is that it was a difference between the freedom he has according to his nature to choose, but not having the moral ability to be able to turn to Christ.

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Now, would this be called compatible free will? Compatibilism? It could be.

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I'd have to look that up, but I'm familiar with the term, but I can't answer that question definitively.

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And, well, the thing that I said before, that a lot of people who are evangelical may be scratching their heads wondering why

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Jonathan Edwards had to defend the Great Awakening, because they don't see any problems in the

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Great Awakening at all. Can you tell us about, first of all, define what the Great Awakening was?

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And I have been confronted with opposition to much that occurred in the

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Great Awakening by Reformed Christians, but of course not all. We're talking about one of the greatest

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Reformed Christians that ever lived that was defending it, as you say, in this thesis.

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Right. But there are people that do chime in with some harsh criticism, but if you could tell us about the

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Great Awakening. Sure. The Great Awakening, very specifically, occurred during the years 1740 to 1742.

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It probably had its most indelible impact in New England, there in colonial

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America, but it also spread beyond New England and into the Middle Colonies, and even down into the

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Southern Colonies. In fact, my fifth great -grandfather, Daniel Marshall, was one of the products of the

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Great Awakening as a separate Baptist, and he and his brother -in -law, Shuval Stearns, they spread the

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Gospel in the Southern Colonies, the Carolinas, and then finally into Georgia with the same fiery earnestness that they witnessed and saw personally in George Whitfield.

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They were definitely the products of what God was doing during that period between 1740 to 1742.

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When we talk about the Great Awakening, we are talking about a spiritual awakening and a revival that took place in the middle of the 18th century here in America.

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In speaking of that, using terms like revival and spiritual awakening today, of course, for many evangelicals today, those kind of terms only conjure up organized meetings that advertise we're having revival.

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But nothing in such a promotion like that leads any Christian to believe that this is a work of God's doing.

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Rather, it's what man has arranged at a specific time on the church calendar.

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But in the 18th century, they didn't have that mindset. It was very foreign to them. You're talking about like when a fundamentalist church or a

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Pentecostal church says, we're having a revival meeting this weekend or something like that. That's exactly what

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I'm talking about. In the 18th century, the evangelical ministers of the 18th century, like Edwards, that was nowhere on their radar.

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That way of understanding revival, that way of understanding awakening. In other words, no one organized or invented the

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Great Awakening. No one advertised in the 18th century, we're having revival.

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Instead, what happened in the mid -18th century under the name of the Great Awakening was a supernatural work of the

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Holy Spirit. It was, in the words of the men who witnessed it, and these are their own words, it was the special and manifest effusions of the

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Spirit of God. What is remarkable about that is that preceding this manifest effusion of the

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Spirit, the churches in the towns there in colonial

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America were not in the best spiritual state of where such a work would even appear to occur.

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One minister who lived at that time period lamented that in these towns, he said religion was in a very low state, professors generally lifeless, that is, professing

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Christians, and the body of our people careless, carnal, insecure. Another minister at this same time expressed the same grievances, that there was an ignorance of some of the most soul -concerning truths of the gospel.

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Amidst the majority, he said people through the land were careless at heart and stupidly indifferent about the great concerns of eternity.

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There was very little appearance of any heart -engagingness in religion, and indeed the wise, for the most part, were in a great degree asleep with the foolish.

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It was sad to see, he said, with what a careless behavior the public ordinances were attended and how people were given to unsuitable worldly discourse on the

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Lord's holy day. He concluded this testimony by saying that religion at that time in America laid, as it were, a dying and ready to expire its last breath of life.

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Now, that's the testimony, those are primary source materials, by the way, that's a testimony of the men who lived in that period.

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So while they were longing and they were yearning and they were praying for the

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Lord to rend the heavens and come down, to use the language of Isaiah, you know, their earnestness in such a work of God was due to the spiritual apathy and lukewarmness that they were seeing all around them.

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And so at a moment when it was least expected, it wasn't something put on the church marquee, there appeared a sweeping divine work of God's Spirit.

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And one minister said, a great awakening, I mean that's the very term he used, a great awakening broke upon the slumbering churches like a thunderbolt rushing out of a clear sky.

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Amen. You know, writing of this supernatural wonder in New England, a minister in Boston named

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William Cooper, he said, the apostolical times seem to have returned upon us.

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Such a display has there been of the power and grace of the divine Spirit and the assemblies of his people, and such testimonies has he given to the word of the gospel.

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And this return to the apostolical times that Pastor Cooper articulated was the extraordinary pouring out of the

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Spirit, where he said more plentiful measures of the Holy Spirit have been seen by his internal saving operations accompanying the outward ministry to produce numerous conversions to Christ and give spiritual life to souls that were before dead in trespasses and sins, and so prepare them for eternal life.

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Pastor Cooper, who actually wrote the forward to Jonathan Edwards' defense for the great awakening, he gave a wonderful overview of the great awakening and actually highlighted six different aspects which mark the outworking of this revival as what he called a season of grace which neither we nor our fathers have seen.

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And those highlights, if I can just work through this with you, Edwards, he says first there were the preachers to whom

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God has given such a large measure of his Spirit that we are ready sometimes to apply to them the character given of Barnabas, that he was a good man and full of the

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Holy Ghost and of faith. And what exactly were these preachers preaching?

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Cooper gets very specific here. He says the doctrines of the Reformation, man's guilt, corruption, and impotence, supernatural regeneration by the

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Spirit of God, and free justification by faith in the righteousness of Christ in the marks of the new birth.

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So the preachers during this period, like Cooper and Edwards and Whitfield and Tennant and those men, these were the distinctive biblical doctrines that they were preaching.

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Secondly, he said what made the great awakening extraordinary was its extent. This was not something happening in one place, but in several provinces that measure many hundred miles on this continent.

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He says it has entered and spread in some of the most populous towns, the chief places of concourse and business.

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Third, the great awakening was great due to the numbers that had been the subjects of this operation.

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Cooper reported that centers had been awakened by hundreds, and the inquiry has been general in some places, what must

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I do to be saved? Jonathan Edwards reported the same thing,

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George Whitfield in his journal and in his correspondence during this same period, because he was in America at this time in 1740 in particular, and he reported of the same thing happening where he was preaching, this general inquiry among the people, what must

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I do to be saved? Fourth, this work of God was remarkable by the fact that people of all sorts and ages were affected, and here

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Cooper gives a catalog of these various awakened centers. He mentions the elderly, the sprightly youth, the graven, the rich, the low and the poor, slaves, the ignorant, the learned, the disorderly and the airy, drunkards, fornicators, adulterers, and the profane, carnal worldlings, scoffers, the virtuous and civil, and even the formal professor has been awakened out of his dead formalities, brought into the power of godliness, taken off from his false rest, and brought to build his hope only on Christ's righteousness.

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And as far as Christians, how were those that were genuine believers affected by the Great Awakening? Cooper says of Christians, he says many of the children of God have been greatly quickened and refreshed, have been awakened out of the sleeping frames they were fallen into and excited to give diligence to make their calling in election sure, and have had precious reviving sealing times.

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Fifth, there was what Cooper called the uniformity of the work. Drawing from many accounts he had received in letters from all across the land,

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Cooper attests that it is the same work that is carried on in one place and another. His main point in this is to show that the method, and these are his words, the method of the

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Spirit's operation on the minds of the people is the same no matter where the manifestation of his grace has been poured out.

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Yet he concedes to the fact that at such an extraordinary time of the Spirit's working, he says

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God is pleased to carry on this work of his grace in a more observable and glorious manner in a way which he would have to be taken notice of by the world.

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And what Pastor Cooper was making reference to were the outward show of tears, trembling, groans, loud outcries, and even the failing of bodily strength as many of these sinners were converted to Christ.

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Cooper argued on this matter that it seems reasonable to suppose that there may be some particular appearances in the work of conversion which are not common at other times, when yet there are true conversions wrought or some circumstances attending the work may be carried to an unusual degree.

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And those last words he says there, some circumstances attending the work may be carried to an unusual degree, those are very critical, important words to understand, to an unusual degree.

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If I may just pull back for a moment here, what we see here from a larger picture is the overall understanding of revival among the evangelical leaders of the 18th century.

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While they referred to it by terms as an outpouring of the Spirit or effusions of the Spirit, yet they did not understand this as something miraculously different from the regular experience of the church.

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That's really important. In fact, Ian Murray, in his wonderful book Revival and Revivalism, he pointed out the difference lies in degree, not in kind.

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He says in an outpouring of the Spirit, spiritual influence is more widespread, convictions are deeper, and feelings more intense, but all this is only a heightening of normal Christianity.

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True revivals are extraordinary, yet what is experienced at such times is not different, in essence, from the spiritual experience that belongs to Christians at other times.

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Ian Murray says it is the larger earnest of the same Spirit who abides with all those who believe.

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And that is exactly the thinking and the understanding of men like William Cooper and Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, those evangelical leaders.

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The last dynamic, though, that Pastor Cooper mentioned as he mused on what God had done by this

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Great Awakening, he said it was the fruit of it. It's fruit. He writes of how the sinners who have been spiritually awakened are continuing to seek and strive to enter the narrow gate.

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Moreover, those who have been converted to Christ, he says, continue to give evidence that they have become a new creation in Christ and seem to cleave to the

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Lord with full purpose of heart. Furthermore, he reveals how taverns, dancing schools, and such meetings as have been called assemblies, which have always proved unfriendly to serious godliness, are much less frequented.

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And finally, as to the culture left by this abusion of the Spirit on a wider scale, Cooper said this, religion is now much more the subject of conversation at friends' houses than ever

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I knew it. The doctrines of grace are espoused and relished.

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Private religious meetings are greatly multiplied. The public assemblies, especially lectures, are much better attended, and our auditors were never so attentive and serious.

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There is indeed an extraordinary appetite after the sincere milk of the Word, and an evening in God's courts is now esteemed better than many elsewhere.

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There is also great resort to ministers in private. He says our hands continue full of work, and many times we have more than we can discourse with distinctly and separately.

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Wow. That was the Great Awakening. Yeah, so that would give reason for pause for Christians out there listening who throw that word revival around very loosely, because very often what they're describing has very little to do with what you just described.

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Oh yeah, no doubt. In fact, as you know, because you and I have talked about this in a previous interview, you know, what most evangelicals think of when they think of revival, they think of it in terms that Charles Gratis and Finney really helped to fuel and advocate and promote.

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You know, Finney, as we know, has been hailed as the father of modern revival -ism, and that's because what

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Finney succeeded in doing was to take the supernatural out of revivals as a sovereign act of God and reduce them to nothing more than using the right methods to get the best results.

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And, you know, with that carnal approach, Finney taught that revivals could be the continuous norm in church life as opposed to an extraordinary work of God at his choosing and on his terms, and thus generations of American evangelicals have followed

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Finney's pragmatic techniques for having revival, where God is called upon to bless their efforts, but he is not relied upon as the true author and giver of genuine revival.

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And I'm sure you would agree with me that an excellent book that compares and contrasts true revival with revivalism is that book of that title,

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Revival and Revivalism by Ian Murray. Absolutely. And where he compares and contrasts

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Finney with Asahel Nettleton, I believe, is the primary figure that he addresses in regard to true revival when compared to Finney and false revival.

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Yes, that is a book that I have read twice...

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And you're starting to fade away, brother. You've got to put your mouth... Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I said that is a book, the book by Ian Murray you mentioned,

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Revival and Revivalism, that is a book that personally I have read twice and have continued to go back to certain chapters in it, especially the three chapters that he devotes to Charles Finney, because Ian Murray does a fantastic job in helping us to understand exactly who

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Finney was and what exactly he did in what

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Ian Murray describes as the marring of American evangelicalism. And what

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I always find quite amazing is that fundamentalists who would be very, very vehemently opposed to Roman Catholicism, and rightfully so, would adopt someone who beats

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Roman Catholicism in regard to Pelagianism. He makes

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Roman Catholics look like Calvinists in comparison. You're right.

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But we have to go to our first break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Kurt M.

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Smith regarding Jonathan Edwards, The Great Awakening, and Jonathan Edwards' defense of The Great Awakening, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back with more of Kurt Smith and our discussion on Jonathan Edwards right after these messages from our sponsors.

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We are now back with our guest today, Kurt M. Smith, author and pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama.

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We are discussing Jonathan Edwards and his defense for the Great Awakening. Well, after what you have described before the break,

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Pastor Kurt, it seems strange that Christians would in any way be opposed to what occurred at the

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Great Awakening. It seems like there was a lot of evidence for biblical regeneration occurring.

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So tell us about this. Why is Jonathan Edwards defending it? Jonathan Edwards was defending the

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Great Awakening because there were some contemporary ministers of his day, particularly there in New England, who saw the manifestations particularly in regards to the bodily faintings, the loud outcries, the tears, the sobbings, that probably chiefly.

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But there were other things, too, that these ministers saw. And with that, they just wrote off what was happening as being a work of God at all.

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In fact, some of the ministers were really harsh enough to say, this is nothing but a work of the devil.

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And that's all it is. It is a completely counterfeit work. This cannot be from the

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Spirit of God. And their criticism of it was a criticism that was not just simply oral.

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It was also being published. And so tracts were being written and things were being spread across New England and beyond.

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And so Jonathan Edwards, he took pen in hand and went to writing a small defense.

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It was only three chapters long, but it was a small book that he entitled The Distinguishing Marks of a

39:29

Work of the Spirit of God. And this book was published in the fall of 1741.

39:37

So it was published while the Great Awakening was actually in progress. And as I mentioned, in the first half hour, the foreword to the book was written by a fellow minister in Boston, William Cooper.

39:53

And William Cooper said at the end of his foreword, in regards to what the reader was about to embark on reading

40:02

Edwards' defense, was that, you know, basically, you need to really pay attention to what

40:08

Jonathan Edwards is about to say, because what Edwards did is he defended the

40:15

Great Awakening by looking to the Word of God, by looking to Scripture, and using

40:23

Scripture as the guide to really and truly judge what the people were seeing and what were they hearing.

40:29

I mean, is this or is this not a work of the Spirit? And so obviously for Jonathan Edwards, he firmly believed it was, although Edwards was a very judicial man.

40:43

He was a very honest man. I mean, he recognized that there were several things that were happening, several things that were being said and reported that, you know, caused questions and even caused confusion.

40:59

And Edwards, he deals with those things in his book, and we'll get to that in just a moment here. But his main design for the book is this, and I'll just quote him.

41:12

He says, My design at this time is to show what are the true, certain, and distinguishing evidences of a work of the

41:23

Spirit of God by which we may safely proceed in judging of any operation we find in ourselves or see in others.

41:36

And here I would observe that we are to take the Scriptures as our guide in such cases.

41:44

This is the great and standing rule which God has given to his church in order to guide them in things relating to the great concerns of their souls, and it is an infallible and sufficient rule.

42:02

So that is Edwards' stated aim, his stated design for writing this book.

42:08

And at the very beginning of the book, he says that in the apostolic age, there was the greatest outpouring of the

42:17

Spirit of God that ever was, both as to his extraordinary influences in gifts and his ordinary operations in convincing, converting, enlightening, and sanctifying the souls of men.

42:29

But as the influences of the true Spirit abounded, so counterfeits did also abound.

42:36

The devil was abundant in mimicking both the ordinary and extraordinary influences of the

42:41

Spirit of God as is manifest by innumerable passages of the apostles' writings.

42:47

This made it very necessary that the church of Christ should be furnished with some certain rules, distinguishing and clear marks by which she might proceed safely in judging of the true from the false without danger of being imposed upon.

43:05

I think what you just read was very important because as you know, in the 20th century and even 21st century that we're now in, there are charismatics and Pentecostals who put a seal of approval on some of the most bizarre manifestations that make what you described as far as the unusual manifestations that Jonathan Edwards witnessed, some of these modern day manifestations make those in comparison seem like the most solemn of Calvinistic Stoic worship services.

43:49

And they will say, you see what happened in the day of the Great Awakening with Jonathan Edwards and so on?

43:55

You Reform people should be reading your own heroes because all these bizarre manifestations were occurring, so therefore you should not bat an eye or denounce what we are experiencing at our revival here in Pensacola, Florida or in Toronto or wherever else where you have women lying on the floor, mimicking the agony of giving birth and all kinds of really strange and weird things.

44:27

Some of them have been bordering on appearing sexual and just strange. So they put the seal of approval on these things because of what happened at the

44:38

Great Awakening. So what you just read was very important to include into the discussion. Yeah, very much so, because that's why, you know, this is not just my opinion about Jonathan Edwards.

44:53

Many scholars and historians have said what Jonathan Edwards, what he became during the

45:01

Great Awakening, and what he remains to this day through his writings, he is the most trusted theologian on revival.

45:12

And therefore he has been called the theologian of revival. And the reason he can be so trusted in this area is because of the very thing he said.

45:24

We will use the Word of God as our guide. We will look to the scriptures.

45:30

It will be the scriptures that will judge for us if what we're seeing and hearing is indeed a work of the

45:36

Spirit of God. And that, of course, is where Pentecostals, historically,

45:44

Charismatics also have, that's where they have missed the mark.

45:49

That's where they, you know, they have not, they have not historically, nor even in the present times, they have not used the

45:59

Word of God as their rule, as their guide. And I can say this, not just as an outsider looking in,

46:07

I can say this even as one time being an insider, because I used to belong to a

46:13

Pentecostal church. Oh really? I don't remember hearing that. Yeah, right. I'm sorry, the show's over now.

46:21

I'm only kidding. Well, you know, I just, I mean,

46:26

I know exactly the thinking in Pentecostalism and Charismaticism.

46:34

I was once there. And so, you know, it's not the scriptures that are determining what we're seeing or what we're hearing.

46:44

Instead, it's just the experience. And it's all about the experience. And just,

46:50

I just want to very quickly say that, because we may be accused of broad -brushing,

46:58

I know very biblically solid men, even pastors who are professedly

47:04

Charismatic or Non -Cessationist or Continuationist, who are equally, if not more so, horrified by some of these bizarre things that go under the umbrella of revival in our day.

47:18

The reason why I say some of them are even more horrified is because they are broad -brushed with that kind of thing.

47:24

And so we can't, we can't, Charismatics and Pentecostals are not cookie -cutter duplications of each other.

47:33

Exactly, yeah. Yes. And I wholeheartedly agree with that, and I can affirm that from personal experience.

47:40

They're definitely not. There are some very godly Orthodox Christians who wear the, who, you know, who come under the banner of Pentecostals and Charismatics.

47:52

And obviously, we part ways with them, theologically, confessionally speaking, when it comes to the continuation of the extraordinary gifts of the

48:04

Spirit. And here's something interesting, even Jonathan Edwards would part ways with them, because Edwards was just as much of a

48:14

Cessationist, to use that term, you know, a Christian who doesn't believe that the signed gifts that were so apparent and in full swing in the first century that they are still for today.

48:29

Edwards was, he was a full, you know, he was a full -fledged

48:37

Cessationist. And what's interesting is, even in this very book, on the distinguishing marks of the work of the

48:44

Spirit of God, he actually goes out of his way to stress his

48:50

Cessationism. So while he discusses at length these unusual and strange things that were happening during the

49:02

Great Awakening, and he doesn't completely discount them, yet at the same time he makes it very clear that it's the ordinary means of grace that the

49:13

Holy Spirit has been using since the, you know, since the end and the close of the Apostolic Age. So anyway, we could be going down a completely different path here real quick.

49:27

But in regard, go ahead. No, no, you could go ahead. You finish your thought. Okay, well, anyway,

49:33

I was just going to say that what Edwards does in this book, and just as an infomercial about the book, anyone who's never read this book, the book is still published today, you can go to Amazon, get it off Amazon.

49:47

Or go to cvbbs .com, who sponsored this program. Yeah, that's right, yes, and they know me there, so how dare

49:56

I tell people to go to Amazon? Oh dear. Anyway, but Banner of Truth, they published this book under the title

50:05

Jonathan Edwards on Revival. Jonathan Edwards on Revival, that's the Banner of Truth edition of this particular book by Edwards.

50:15

And of course, they also have two other two other pieces of literature by Edwards in that same book.

50:22

But the largest portion of the book is this little paperback on the distinguishing marks of the work of the

50:29

Spirit of God. What I was going to say about this book, though, in general, is that it is forged into three different divisions, three different chapters.

50:36

The very first chapter, Edwards is showing that we cannot judge a work as not from the

50:47

Holy Spirit just because there are strange or extraordinary manifestations we see.

50:55

And what he says here, he says the Holy Spirit is sovereign in his operations, and we know that he uses a great variety.

51:05

And we cannot tell how great a variety he may use within the compass of the rules he himself has fixed.

51:14

We ought not to limit God where he has not limited himself.

51:21

That's a really important statement. We ought not to limit God where God has not limited himself.

51:29

And so from there, Edwards gives several examples of the things that were going on that would be strange or extraordinary.

51:44

Go ahead. I was just going to say, if you could pick up where you left off listing those because I don't want to interrupt you in mid -sentence like I just did.

51:51

We have to go to our midway break, but you do have time to complete that sentence that I just interrupted.

51:58

Well, I'm just going to say that what Edwards begins with in this first chapter is dealing with the several criticisms that his critics were making against the

52:11

Great Awakening, and so he's going out of his way, and we'll get to this after the break, but he's going out of his way to say, okay, all these things are facts, but they don't disprove that this is a work of God.

52:22

Right, and in fact, I don't know if you have, but I have encountered modern -day Reformed Christians who seem to have taken those men who were critics of Edwards and the

52:36

Revival, they have taken them as their heroes today and seem to be in agreement with them. I don't know if you have encountered them, but I have.

52:42

Not a lot, but I have encountered them from time to time.

52:48

So, this is not absent from our modern day, this opposition. So, we're going to be going to a break right now.

52:56

This is a longer break than normal because Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida requires a 12 -minute break between our two major segments.

53:06

Take this time to write down the information that our advertisers are providing, and also take this time to write questions for our guests.

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We do have some of you already waiting to have your questions asked and answered, and we'll get to you as soon as we can. So, if you'd like to ask, if you'd like to get in line and ask a question of Kurt M.

53:25

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God willing, we'll be right back with Kurt M. Smith. One sure way all

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am

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That's nasbible .com for more details. Before we return to our guest today,

01:06:03

Kurt M. Smith, and our discussion on Jonathan Edwards and his defense of the

01:06:08

Great Awakening, we just have a couple more announcements. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is once again having the

01:06:15

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01:06:39

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That's much closer to Philadelphia. And the theme is the Spirit of the Age and the

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Age of the Spirit. The speakers include Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, the man

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01:10:28

Kurt M. Smith, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama. On the theme today,

01:10:35

Jonathan Edwards and his defense for the Great Awakening, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Well, you can now go through,

01:10:42

Pastor Kurt, some of those things that you were going to list that were manifestations of the

01:10:47

Great Awakening. Yeah, in the first chapter, as I had said in the first hour,

01:10:56

Jonathan Edwards, he is showing several examples of things that were happening outwardly that were being heavily criticized by the critics of the

01:11:09

Great Awakening, and the criticism was going so far as saying, this is not a work of God, this is a work of the devil.

01:11:18

So Edwards, in the first chapter, he says that we cannot judge a work as not from the

01:11:24

Holy Spirit just because there are strange or extraordinary manifestations that we see.

01:11:33

And he begins with, a work is not to be judged by any effects on the bodies of men, such as tears, trembling, groans, loud outcries, agonies of body, or the failing of bodily strength.

01:11:52

He says we cannot conclude that all persons are under the influence of the true spirit because we see such effects upon their bodies, because this is not given as a mark of the true spirit, nor, on the other hand, have we any reason to conclude from any outward appearances that persons are not under the influence of the spirit of God because there is no rule of scripture given us to judge of spirits by that does either expressly or indirectly exclude such effects on the body, nor does reason exclude them.

01:12:26

In fact, I get through all of those symptoms if a pizza delivery is late, so it is interesting.

01:12:32

Sorry about that. Well, he makes this very interesting argument under this point.

01:12:41

He spends a good bit of time under this point, obviously, because this was becoming, as the great awakening was progressing, this was becoming more of a manifestation.

01:12:53

He says that it may easily be accounted for that a true sense of the glorious excellency of the

01:13:01

Lord Jesus Christ and of his wonderful dying love and the exercise of a truly spiritual love and joy should be such as very much to overcome the bodily strength.

01:13:16

He says we are all ready to own that no man can see God and live and that it is but a very small part of that apprehension of the glory and love of Christ which the saints enjoy in heaven that our present frame can bear.

01:13:32

Therefore, it is not at all strange that God should sometimes give his saints such foretaste of heaven as to diminish their bodily strength.

01:13:44

You know, I think that the reverse would also be a sign that we should distrust a revival that is claimed to have broken out, and I'm not saying that you automatically discount it, but I have always found the demonstrations of coming to Christ very spurious when

01:14:11

I have been in the audience or in the congregation wherever this revival meeting is taking place, when

01:14:19

I see long lines of people going forward to accept

01:14:25

Christ into their heart, quote, quote, and you see them online looking as if they're waiting online at the motor, the

01:14:33

Department of Motor Vehicles. There is just like the devoid of emotion. You can't help but think, are they just going forward because they were told to or they're trying to impress their spouses or their fiancées or their parents or whatever is going on?

01:14:50

And you know, sometimes you see them just, you know, standing there chewing gum chatting online like they're maybe going into a movie or something.

01:14:56

Is this really, you know, the reverse of that I think would also call one to question the reality of what's going on.

01:15:03

I mean, do you agree with that? I do, I do agree with that, and I agree with that just for the simple reason that if we look at scripture and we look at what occurred, you know, in such examples like Isaiah, Ezekiel, the

01:15:25

Apostle John, when, you know, when they actually saw the

01:15:31

Lord, when they had, you know, an actual manifestation of Christ, they were not stoic.

01:15:43

They, their response was frankly very emotional. You know, they did lose bodily strength.

01:15:52

In fact, the Apostle John fell as a dead man, and that's what

01:15:57

Jonathan Edwards is, that's what he's getting at. That's what, that's what he's, that's what he's arguing and building his case here.

01:16:02

You know, no one can see God and live. So our emotions when it comes to a work of the

01:16:11

Spirit of God, whether it's in a revival or not in a revival, our emotions are very much engaged because it's a part of who we are, and when the

01:16:22

Lord is saving us, is he not saving the whole man? You know, he's not just, he's not just saving a part of us.

01:16:30

I mean, we're being, the whole man is being transformed. Yeah, and of course, I'm sure you would agree that although everything that you're saying is true, there's always the healthy skepticism that we should have, and also, even though we should be on the watch out for false manifestations and false converts through, that are manifesting bizarre, weird things, not discounting everything, but being, being carefully biblically minded in our skepticism.

01:17:15

At the same time, we shouldn't, as many charismatics and Pentecostals do, discount completely that something real is happening just because people are not reacting the way they do.

01:17:26

I have had a number of friends who are charismatic or Pentecostal who have visited churches where I have been a member, and they have said to me, you people are dead.

01:17:37

You don't even have the spirit because, you know, you're just, you're reading those old dusty hymns. You're just standing there or sitting there.

01:17:45

I don't see anybody dancing around. I don't see anybody waving hands and shouting. So, people do manifest emotion in different ways.

01:17:56

I mean, we're not all built the same way. I mean, Scotsmen and Scandinavians may not react the same way as Mediterranean, you know what

01:18:07

I'm saying? Right. That's absolutely right. And here's the other thing, too, in regards to what

01:18:14

Jonathan Edwards is saying here. Edwards is just simply pointing out to his critics, you cannot discount this just because these bodily effects, this failing of bodily strength, these kind of manifestations are happening.

01:18:31

He's saying, in other words, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know, that just because you see this happening or, as you're saying, maybe you don't see it happening.

01:18:43

In either case, you cannot discount that, you know, the Holy Spirit's not at work here.

01:18:49

You know, that, and that's where the second chapter of the book, and I'll get to that in a moment, but that's where the second chapter of the book,

01:18:57

Jonathan Edwards builds, he really builds his case from the scriptures to say there are definite, there are distinguishing marks of the

01:19:08

Spirit of God that are the rules that determine for us if this is an operation of the

01:19:15

Spirit or not. You know, what was happening in the mid -18th century in the Great Awakening with this manifestation of loud outcries and tears and sobbing and all that,

01:19:25

Edwards is just, he's just simply saying, all right, look, you can't say yay or nay to this.

01:19:32

You know, it is what it is, and in some of these cases, a true conversion is actually happening, but how do we know a true conversion is happening?

01:19:42

And that's where he'll get into the second chapter, and he'll build his case from scripture to say here's the fruit that was being manifested, and it's fruit that we find in the

01:19:53

Bible. It's what the Bible says we need to be looking for. And we have to be very careful, then, on either side, whether we are the most stoic of Calvinists or the most free -spirited of Charismatics, we have to be very careful not to slander

01:20:09

Brethren in Christ by jumping to a wrong conclusion and making it publicly known that this person is a false convert for one extreme or the other.

01:20:23

That's right. That is exactly right. All right, well, if you could continue. Yeah, sure. The second example that he gives,

01:20:30

I'm still in the first chapter, he says, it is no argument that an operation on the minds of people is not the work of the

01:20:37

Spirit of God, that it occasions a great deal of noise about religion.

01:20:45

And what he's referring to there was just simply the great stirring that was happening, that it was, you know, that the towns were being filled with all of this conversation of where, you know,

01:20:59

Christianity, this awakening to the Christian faith, it was becoming what was the talk of the town.

01:21:07

And believe it or not, I mean, now, you know, for me, I would think, well, I would love to see that, you know, that the things of God were becoming the chief things people were talking about.

01:21:19

But for the critics of the Great Awakening, they discounted the Great Awakening as not being from the

01:21:25

Lord because of such a stirring like that. And so Edward says, no, wait a minute, you know, you can't discount this just because there's a great deal of noise about religion.

01:21:37

The third thing he says, it's no argument that an operation on the minds of people is not not the work of the

01:21:42

Spirit of God, that many who are the subjects of it have great impressions made on their imaginations.

01:21:51

And of course, there was that going on. And Edwards, in this book, in fact, in the third chapter in this book, he will argue regarding this to say, we need to be very cautious, we need to be very careful about these great impressions made on people's imaginations.

01:22:12

In other words, there were some, there were some people during the Great Awakening that were claiming that God was speaking directly to them.

01:22:19

They were, you know, they were claiming to have the inspiration of the Spirit, as did the apostles.

01:22:25

And Edwards, this is where Edwards' cessationism comes into full focus in the third chapter of this book, where he says, no, that's not what, first of all, that has ceased.

01:22:36

And not even the apostles themselves, you know, took what they were given by God and the work and miracles as being the great evidence that, you know, that, in other words, that that's the chief evidence that the

01:22:51

Spirit of God is at work. Instead, Edwards said, no, for the apostles, it was being in the pursuit of holiness.

01:22:57

It was, it was looking for those graces of the Spirit more than the gifts. And, you know, but nevertheless,

01:23:04

Edwards is just simply saying, he's trying here to be fair and judicial to say, you know, you can't discount this as not being a work of the

01:23:13

Holy Spirit, just because some people have great impressions made of their imaginations. Then he goes on, number four, he says, it's no sign that a work is not from the

01:23:23

Spirit of God. That example is a great means of it. And what he means is, he says, it is agreeable to Scripture that persons should be influenced by one another's example.

01:23:36

And there were, you know, there were those that were being influenced, positively speaking, about the

01:23:43

Great Awakening, just by the example, the godly example that they were seeing in these people that were being converted.

01:23:52

And then, of course, in Christians, they were being renewed in their faith and renewed in their affections for the

01:23:58

Lord. He goes further, he says, it's no sign that a work is not from the Spirit of God that many who seem to be the subjects of it are guilty of great imprudence and irregularities in their conduct.

01:24:12

Now, here, this is really important. He says, we have a remarkable instance in the

01:24:19

New Testament of a people that partook largely of that great effusion of the

01:24:26

Spirit in the apostles' days, among whom, he says, among whom there nevertheless abounded imprudences and great irregularities.

01:24:37

And he is speaking very specifically about the Corinthian church. And he says, in regards to the

01:24:43

Corinthian church, he says, there is scarcely any church more celebrated in the New Testament for being blessed with large measures of the

01:24:51

Spirit of God, yet what manifold imprudences, great and sinful irregularities, and strange confusion did they run into at the

01:25:01

Lord's Supper and in the exercise of church discipline? So, the argument he's making there, which is, as a matter of fact, is the same argument that, in the 20th century,

01:25:14

Martin Lloyd -Jones would make in his series of sermons on revival, that when it comes to a true awakening, a true revival that is happening, you're going to have this mix of irregularities and imprudences.

01:25:28

Why? Because the people being revived are still fallen, sinful people. And the example, the great example from the

01:25:37

New Testament is, look at the Corinthian church. Did not the apostle Paul address them in his first letter as being sanctified in Christ Jesus, even though there were so many problems in that church, so many irregularities and imprudences in that church?

01:25:55

But yet, there was such a massive manifestation of the Spirit's gifts and of his working in that church among even those people.

01:26:04

And that's what Jonathan Edwards is after, and what he's saying there with that. Well, let's go to our final break.

01:26:10

It's going to be very brief, and if anybody would like to get in line and ask a question, do so now or forever hold your peace because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:26:18

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01:26:23

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01:26:31

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01:26:59

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01:30:09

We are now back with our final half hour with our guest, Kurt M. Smith, the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama.

01:30:18

We are discussing Jonathan Edwards and his defense for the Great Awakening. Did you want to finish a thought before we go to any of our listener questions?

01:30:27

Yeah, basically what Edwards is showing in the first chapter of this book on the distinguishing marks of a work of the

01:30:36

Spirit of God, is he's just simply saying that when the

01:30:41

Holy Spirit is at work in such a measure like this, like he was in the Great Awakening, it's not going to be perfect in everything that we see, because first of all, it's a work that is happening within the context of a fallen world, among fallen people, even though they are redeemed, but they are still fallen.

01:31:05

The remnants of corruption are still there within them, and so while it is a glorious work on the one hand, yet in that glorious work, it's also going to be messy.

01:31:19

He makes the point in this first chapter, he says, the devil's sowing of such tares is no proof that a true work of the

01:31:30

Spirit of God is not gloriously carried on, because that's something that was happening, that's something that did happen.

01:31:37

He said, if some who are thought to be wrought upon fall away into gross errors or scandalous practices, it is no argument that the work in general is not the work of the

01:31:46

Spirit of God. So there's going to be messiness, there's going to be excessiveness that we're going to see in a true revival, this is what

01:31:54

Edwards is getting at, but just because of the excessiveness that we see in these things, we don't have the right, we don't have the authority biblically to just completely turn an about -face and say, this cannot be of God and forfeit the whole thing.

01:32:13

So that's his argument in chapter one. Well, we have some listeners who have questions for you.

01:32:20

We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who wants to know, in your opinion, what was the last revival that has taken place that you would deem to be a genuine revival?

01:32:37

Well, since it is, in my opinion, and I'll keep it in that context, as far as general awakenings are concerned,

01:32:54

I would say definitely the last bona fide spiritual awakening, at least here in the

01:33:01

United States, even though it also occurred there in Great Britain and also in Ireland, would be what is called the

01:33:07

Third Great Awakening, which covered the years of 1857 to 1859.

01:33:13

And didn't it start in New York City, is that the one you're referring to? That's the one I'm referring to, it sure did.

01:33:19

It started in a Dutch Reformed church with a businessman by the name of Jeremiah Lanphier, who had put an ad in the paper for a 12 o 'clock prayer meeting among businessmen to come and show up there at the

01:33:35

Dutch Reformed church. And it was within less than six months, the prayer meetings were so full, they only lasted,

01:33:47

I believe, just half an hour. But they went to an hour and those prayer meetings began spreading all over New York City, but eventually they spread all over the country.

01:34:02

And it was something that was a spontaneous work of the

01:34:07

Spirit of God. There's a great book by J. Edwin Orr, who was a great scholar on revival history, and the book is called

01:34:15

The Event of the Century. And it covers, from primary source materials, every state in America during that period and all the reports coming from those churches of that revival and what was happening.

01:34:29

By the way, your voice is fading out a little bit, so try to remember to... Sorry, thank you.

01:34:34

Thank you, Chris. And another book I'd like to recommend that is published by the Banner of Truth is

01:34:40

The Power of Prayer, the New York Revival of 1858 by Samuel Prime.

01:34:46

And you can get that from cvbbs .com. That's cvbbs .com.

01:34:52

Thank you very much, RJ, in White Plains, New York. And we have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, how can we determine what is a genuine conversion to Christ and what is a charade?

01:35:11

How bizarre do the manifestations have to be before we discount them as either fakery or satanic?

01:35:20

Some of the things that I've heard about in some of these modern -day charismatic and Pentecostal revivals go so far deep into strange and evil manifestations, at least manifestations that look evil and sound evil, that I cannot believe that any of them are genuine.

01:35:42

How can we sort out the wheat from the chaff in regard to these kinds of manifestations?

01:35:50

Well, I'll let Jonathan Edwards answer that question, actually. The second chapter of his book on the distinguishing marks of the work of the

01:35:58

Spirit of God, he answers the question that this brother is asking, and he answers it from the book of 1

01:36:09

John, chapter 4, verses 1 -12, where in that passage the Apostle John teaches us and warns us to test every spirit to see whether it is from God.

01:36:22

And then the Apostle John gives us the test. To put them in the form of questions, basically it's four questions.

01:36:30

Now, these questions are actually questions I've written based on what Jonathan Edwards wrote in his exposition of this passage of Scripture, but this answers our brother's question.

01:36:42

The first question is this, who did the people say Jesus Christ is, and what has he done?

01:36:50

That's question number one. Who did the people say Jesus Christ is, and what has he done? Question number two, does this work?

01:36:58

Okay, let's say he's talking about conversion, false or true. Well, if this conversion is true or false, here's the question, does it promote godliness or does it promote worldliness?

01:37:09

Does it promote godliness or does it promote worldliness? The third question is this, does this work promote the

01:37:16

Word of God as the only infallible rule of faith and practice? And so, therefore, as Edwards says, he says the spirit that operates in such a manner as to cause in men a greater regard to the holy scriptures and establishes them more in their truth and divinity is certainly the spirit of God.

01:37:34

He says another rule to judge of spirits may be drawn from those compilations given to the opposite spirits in the last words of 1

01:37:43

John 4, 6, the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. These words exhibit the two opposite characters of the spirit of God and other spirits that counterfeit his operations.

01:37:52

And therefore, if by observing the manner of the operation of a spirit that is at work among a people, we see that it operates as a spirit of truth, leading persons to truth, convincing them of those things that are true, we may safely determine that it is a right and true spirit.

01:38:11

And that just falls in line with the previous point. Okay, if there's a true conversion that has happened, then based on 1

01:38:20

John 4, then the person who has been truly converted, they're going to submit themselves to the

01:38:26

Word of God. They're going to believe the Bible is the Word of God, the infallible, inerrant Word of God.

01:38:32

They are going to become, because of an innate desire in them due to the regenerating work of the

01:38:40

Holy Spirit, they're going to want to become walking Bibles. So that's something that is a distinguishing mark of the spirit of God.

01:38:49

And then the last question is this, does this work promote love for God, love for the church, and love for our fellow man?

01:39:02

And this was something that Jonathan Edwards built upon 1 John 4, 7 -12.

01:39:09

And he says that the spirit that is at work among a people operates as a spirit of love to God and man.

01:39:14

It is a sure sign that it is the spirit of God. And he even got down to specifics here.

01:39:22

He said, the surest character of true divine supernatural love, distinguishing it from counterfeits that arise from a natural self -love, is that the

01:39:32

Christian virtue of humility shines in it, that which above all others renounces, abases, and annihilates what we term self.

01:39:42

So he says, love and humility are two things the most contrary to the spirit of the devil of anything in the world.

01:39:52

For the character of that evil spirit above all things consists in pride and malice.

01:39:59

And so this would be the answer to our brother's question in regards to true and false conversions.

01:40:07

And this is based on 1 John 4. Who do the people say Jesus Christ is, and what has he done?

01:40:13

Does this work promote godliness or worldliness? Does this work promote the word of God as the only infallible rule of faith and practice?

01:40:22

And then lastly, does this promote love for God, love for the church, and love for our fellow man?

01:40:28

We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, I have witnessed charismatics who claim to be under the power of the

01:40:37

Holy Spirit, who actually literally behave like animals, like howling wolves and barking dogs.

01:40:45

Can anything like this ever be attached to a genuine

01:40:51

Holy Spirit -filled conversion or work of the Holy Spirit in a believer?

01:41:02

I would have to say no, for the simple reason that if we judge that by scripture, we don't find any evidence of anything that bizarre.

01:41:22

Other than in an evil way, like Nebuchadnezzar. Yeah, right.

01:41:29

Right. But as far as, here's what

01:41:35

I would say. These people that this person is speaking of would be people that would claim to be

01:41:40

Christians and proclaim to profess Christ. But the

01:41:46

Spirit of Christ, the fruit of the Spirit, is love and joy and peace, patience, kindness.

01:41:55

That's what we should be looking for. We should be looking, in fact, to put it in the words again,

01:42:05

Jonathan Edwards, since he's our subject here. Jonathan Edwards says, salvation and the eternal enjoyment of God is promised to divine grace, but not to inspiration.

01:42:19

A man may have those extraordinary gifts and yet be abominable to God and go to hell. He says the greatest privilege of the prophets and apostles was not their being inspired and working miracles, but their imminent holiness.

01:42:34

The grace that was in their hearts was a thousand times more their dignity and honor than their miraculous gifts.

01:42:44

So in seeing manifestations like what this person is speaking of, you do have to raise the question, but where is the

01:42:56

Spirit of holiness in this? Where is the Spirit that promotes godliness in this? Where is the

01:43:04

Spirit that is actually drawing people to hear the

01:43:09

Word of God and desire to want to conform themselves to the Word of God?

01:43:15

You know, you don't see that, and actually what this person is describing is nothing but raw fanaticism.

01:43:24

Right. And with Nebuchadnezzar, it was judgment upon him. Yeah. And wouldn't you say that there is a difference between some of the things that Jonathan Edwards witnessed that are logically connected to someone discovering that they are a hell -bound sinner who's been rescued by the mercy of God.

01:43:51

There's a connection with crying and fainting and, you know, things like that, whereas acting like an animal, there is no connection.

01:44:02

What possible connection could there be to someone discovering the grace and mercy of a

01:44:09

Savior acting like an animal doesn't have any connection in my mind.

01:44:15

I can't even fathom of one. And in fact, it would be things that would give reason for unbelievers to automatically mock what's going on and trivialize what's going on.

01:44:34

Well, if you look back at the way that Edwards argued in defense for the Great Awakening, you know, even with, as we've already discussed, even with the manifestations of people's bodily strength leaving them, there being loud outcries and tears and so forth, these things came in connection with, in response to, the preaching of the

01:44:59

Gospel, the preaching of God's Word. That's why there was such an emphasis in what these ministers who were the promoters of the

01:45:13

Great Awakening who believed in this being a work of the Spirit of God, that's the reason why so many of them went out of their way to say, but look at what is being preached, look at what is being taught.

01:45:24

These people are not responding to something that is false, to something that is heretical.

01:45:34

They're not being led astray. They're not being led to a false Christ. No, they are being led to the true

01:45:39

Christ. They're hearing the true Christ being preached. And for many of them, not all of them, of course, but for many of them, this was their response.

01:45:50

Look at what happened when Jonathan Edwards preached, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, in Enfield, Connecticut.

01:45:57

I mean, we know the story of, here's Edwards preaching this sermon, it's the most famous sermon in American history, a sermon that he had preached on another occasion, actually at the church he pastored in Northampton, and when he preached it there, what happened in Enfield, Connecticut, did not happen in Northampton.

01:46:20

It was a completely different response. But there in Enfield, the people were, to use the words of Whitefield, George Whitefield described so many occasions during the

01:46:31

Great Awakening where he preached the Word, and the people, he said, were melted by the Word.

01:46:38

And that's what you see happening here, people melted by the Word. And the type of charismatic services that this person is referring to, one thing that is truly absent in those services, that you see it all the time, there is no exposition of the

01:46:57

Scriptures, there is no proclamation of the Word, that is what's absent. That's right. Completely absent.

01:47:02

I was at two Rodney Howard Brown gatherings, not there because I believe that he had the truth to tell, or to preach, but because my former boss at a

01:47:17

Christian radio station wanted me to accompany him because the Rodney Howard Brown organization wanted to buy advertising from the station where I worked, and he wanted to see and hear with his own eyes and ears what was going on, and the whole thing was about the manifestation.

01:47:36

He never preached the cross, he never preached repentance, and I'm not saying, of course, that he has never preached those things, but when

01:47:43

I was there, it was all about the manifestation. It was all about the supernatural phenomenon, or at least what he would call a supernatural phenomenon.

01:47:53

In fact, it might be, in reality, supernatural, but not from the right place. Right. But yeah, he was not calling people to repentance, and so on, and talking about the atoning blood of Christ, or anything like that.

01:48:10

And yet, during the Great Awakening, that's what all of these preachers, that's what they were doing.

01:48:16

They were calling sinners to repent, calling sinners to close with Christ.

01:48:23

So, you know, the responses of the people was a response to the truth. Right. You know, they were not promoting fanaticism.

01:48:31

In fact, one of the things that stuck out in my mind both times I was in the audience at that spectacle was

01:48:40

Rodney Howard Brown was treating everyone in that audience, and at least one occasion there were definitely over a thousand people there, he was treating them all like they were

01:48:51

Christians. He was speaking to them as if they were believers, born -again individuals.

01:48:57

So, I mean, obviously, that was absurd. We, let's see, we have

01:49:06

Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who said, you mentioned

01:49:11

Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones earlier, and I have heard charismatics claim him as their own, and even some

01:49:19

Reformed Christians were disappointed in the great doctor because some of the things that he taught did lead to later charismatic manifestations and beliefs among those who were his followers.

01:49:34

Can you comment on this? Sure. Well, Martin Lloyd -Jones was definitely not a charismatic.

01:49:45

In fact, he made it very clear in the 1960s that he was not a charismatic because, you know, the charismatic movement started in 1960 out of California.

01:49:56

I thought it just started at the Azusa street. That was the Pentecostal.

01:50:05

Pentecostalism and charismaticism are two completely different things. But the charismatic movement, yeah, started in 1960, and Martin Lloyd -Jones, you know, he was very, very aware of it, but he was also very critical of it.

01:50:19

And what he taught, which charismatics, and I would even say even

01:50:26

Calvinistic Christians who would not be charismatics, but they would be what's called continuationists, like John Piper, like Wayne Groot, and men like that.

01:50:35

Sovereign grace ministries. Sovereign grace ministries, exactly. They like to lay claim to Lloyd -Jones because Lloyd -Jones, he did believe that there was the possibility that the gift of prophecy could still be manifested today, but he was so cautious in his teaching about that, and that was a later teaching because much earlier in his ministry, and this was published in a crossway volume of books on Bible doctrines, a series of messages that Lloyd -Jones had taught at Westminster in the 1950s, and Lloyd -Jones is very much a cessationist in those lectures, but later he did, you know, he did change his mind somewhat regarding that.

01:51:34

The biggest thing that he taught was regarding the baptism with the

01:51:41

Holy Spirit. And Martin Lloyd -Jones, he did believe that the baptism was a separate work from regeneration, but what he taught about that was very, very different than say what

01:51:58

Charles Finney and the Wesleyan Methodists who would all, you know, who would all eventually produce

01:52:07

Pentecostals. It was very different than from what they taught. Lloyd -Jones, his conviction about the baptism with the

01:52:16

Holy Spirit was, he called it the highest form of salvation assurance that a

01:52:21

Christian could ever receive. It was the spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we're the children of God.

01:52:27

So it was not the Pentecostal understanding of baptism with the

01:52:33

Holy Spirit, which as they teach is manifested by the initial physical evidence of speaking in tongues.

01:52:39

Martin Lloyd -Jones never believed that. Furthermore, it wasn't what

01:52:45

Charismatics would believe about it either. So for him, it was a matter of assurance, assurance of salvation.

01:52:53

There is a very, very good book that is written by Ian Murray. Ian Murray, who of course is the definitive biographer of Martin Lloyd -Jones,

01:53:04

Ian Murray wrote a book that Banner of Truth published called Lloyd -Jones,

01:53:10

Messenger of Grace. And Ian Murray does a fantastic job in devoting a very large chapter, in fact

01:53:16

I think it's the largest chapter in the book, to Martin Lloyd -Jones' understanding of the baptism with the Holy Spirit and really getting down to the brass tacks of what

01:53:25

Lloyd -Jones really believed. And Ian Murray shows conclusively that, you know, while yes, there are

01:53:31

Charismatics today who would like to attach themselves and claim Lloyd -Jones in their camp, but that's really not being true and honest to what

01:53:41

Martin Lloyd -Jones actually believed. And you can get that book from cvbbs .com.

01:53:46

And you could also get the DVDs under the title

01:53:52

Logic on Fire about Martin Lloyd -Jones. Really fascinating documentary series of DVDs, a set of DVDs I mean.

01:54:05

Go to cvbbs .com. And going back to your distinguishing between the

01:54:11

Azusa Street Revival and the beginning of the Charismatic Movement, would the difference be

01:54:19

Charismatics or the Charismatic Movement opened up the door for interdenominational participation in things that were exclusively prior to that?

01:54:35

Manifestations within Pentecostal denominations like the Assembly of God, the Church of God, Church of God in Christ, etc, etc.

01:54:42

Is that what the difference would be? And also the Pentecostals typically have said that the gifts of tongues are a necessary sign of the baptism of the

01:54:55

Holy Spirit, where Charismatics typically don't require that. Some might, but am

01:55:00

I on the right page here or am I off base? Yes, you are. You're very much on the right page.

01:55:07

The Charismatic Movement is really more of what we would call an ecumenical movement.

01:55:17

Because as you put it, interdenominational, the Charismatic Movement starting in California, starting with an

01:55:28

Episcopalian priest who claimed that he woke up one morning speaking in tongues and that was the first sign of this.

01:55:37

He had no connection with Pentecostal churches or anything of that nature.

01:55:43

And so the Charismatic Movement, it did not have those distinctive doctrinal beliefs that Pentecostals have always held to since their beginning in the very early 20th century.

01:56:02

One thing that has to be understood about Pentecostals versus Charismatics is that theologically speaking,

01:56:10

Pentecostals are what I have called Methodists on jets. They are true blue Wesleyan Methodists, but they are on jets.

01:56:28

I mean, you know, just they're always in flight. And they're also the heirs of Charles Finney's revivalism because as I had said earlier in this program,

01:56:39

Finney tried to maintain that revival can just be the norm for church life.

01:56:45

And so in a Pentecostal service, every service is basically an indoor revival service.

01:56:53

And that has all of its roots in Charles Finney. And so those are peculiar distinctives about Pentecostals that you will not find as distinctives among Charismatics.

01:57:07

Charismatics, of course, do believe in the continuation of the miraculous gifts, but how they view and how they believe the baptism with the

01:57:16

Holy Spirit is different from Pentecostals. And of course, you've already mentioned that, but the

01:57:22

Charismatic movement is wider. It goes to more people, but Pentecostals, they're much more closed in.

01:57:30

They are a denomination. Right, right. It might surprise a lot of people to learn that Oral Roberts was a

01:57:38

United Methodist, and Pat Robertson, I don't know if he still is, but Pat Robertson for quite a while was a

01:57:45

Southern Baptist. I don't know if he still is, but perhaps you would know being a Southern Baptist. Yeah, I doubt very seriously if he is still a

01:57:54

Southern Baptist, but yes, at one time in his past he was. Well, we are out of time, brother, and I want to make sure that our listeners have your contact information.

01:58:04

Once again, the website for the Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Pine Mountain, Alabama is prbc1689 .org.

01:58:14

P -R -B -C, standing for Providence Reformed Baptist Church, 1689 for the 1689

01:58:20

London Baptist Confession, dot org. And the website where you can get books written by our guest, solid -ground -books .com,

01:58:32

the publisher at least of some of Kurt Smith's books, solid -ground -books .com, and of course cvbbs .com

01:58:39

is a resource where you can get any of his books, regardless of who published them. Any other contact information that you care to share?

01:58:47

No, you have covered it all, Chris, thank you. Well, it is a pleasure.

01:58:53

It has been a pleasure interviewing you again. I look forward to our next interview. In fact, I'll send you a calendar of available dates where you can choose from and return to the program.

01:59:04

I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions, and I hope that you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:16

Savior than you are a sinner. Please mark your calendars for this

01:59:21

Friday. Fred Malone, the author of The Baptism of Disciples Alone, is our guest, and of course we are airing a program every day throughout the week, but that's one that may be of particular interest to our listeners who are

01:59:37

Reformed Baptists. That's Fred Malone, author of The Baptism of Disciples Alone, this Friday, 4 to 6 p .m.

01:59:43

Eastern Time. God bless you all. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.