August 25, 2017 Show with Tom Sullivan on “Counsel for the Awakened Sinner” AND “The History of Revivals in the 2nd Great Awakening (Prior to Charles Finney)”

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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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.

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

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.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 25th day of August 2017.

I'm delighted to have back on the program a returning guest, Tom Sullivan, who operates

Voice in the Wilderness Radio, a network that airs Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and he also operates

Puritan Audiobooks. Today we are going to be discussing for the first hour Council for the

Awakened Sinner and during the second hour, God willing, we are going to be addressing the history of revivals in the

Second Great Awakening prior to Charles Finney and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Tom Sullivan.

Oh thank you for the invitation, Chris. And in studio with me is my co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

Hello world, it's good to be back. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is

ChrisArntzen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And please, as always, give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. And before we go into the subjects at hand,

Tom, since we last had you on the program, I think that we have had an even greater explosion in regard to the expansion of the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listening audience. We're getting contacted either on the air or off the air every day, practically, with rare exceptions by new people who have never listened to the program before, who just discovered it and have fallen in love with it.

So there are a lot of people who are going to be totally unfamiliar, likely, with Voice in the Wilderness Radio and Puritan Audiobooks.

Why don't you tell our listeners about those two entities? Well, Voice in the Wilderness Radio, to be honest with you, is just hanging by a thread.

But the last time I was on with you, we had our greatest numbers after that show that we have ever had before.

The website is wildernessradio .com, and it's mostly Reformed Baptist preaching as well as a number of podcasts that many people have heard of, for example,

Kevin Swanson's or Ken Ham or other people to keep it interesting.

Puritan Audiobooks, which is at www .puritanaudiobooks .net is my present place on the internet to put my narrated works, which is now the largest collection of Reformed and Puritan works in the world, the largest number of unique titles of Puritans and Reformed works.

And then on top of that, I have a dear brother who has created a YouTube channel where a number of my narrations are being put on YouTube.

You might keep us in prayer. I understand that within the last week, we've gotten some friction from Google, who now is in control of YouTube, that we've been somewhat labeled, at least for advertising purposes, as bordering on a hate group.

I don't know where this comes from, but I know there's a great enmity against religion, there's enmity against this type of Christianity, and so it is to be expected.

But we would appreciate your prayers that we could continue to, because the numbers on YouTube are huge, are quite a bit larger than Sermon Audio.

The audience is considerably larger. I'll just give you an example. My greatest, for numbers, narrated sermon that is on YouTube is over 18 ,000 views, and the title is

The Heart of Man is Exceeding Deceitful by Jonathan Edwards. So if you can put a title out like that, and our country needs those kind of titles to be out there, and you can have 18 ,000 views, the enemy isn't just going to sit back and yawn.

We're going to be under an attack, but as long as we have this open door, we want to push through with it.

Yeah, these are disturbing times. It is amazing how liberals really devolved into leftist totalitarians.

Liberals used to be crying out for an equal voice among many in the public square.

Now they just want to snuff out everybody else's voice. Yeah, that's true enough, brother.

So we definitely need, I mean, I'm sure that Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio is going to be facing similar kinds of conflict, if they're not already happening, and I'm just not aware of it.

Well, look at how you've had to defend our dear brother Dr. James White lately.

Who would have thought there would be such a, you know, derision even from those who profess to be

Christians, who profess to be in the same battle. I mean, it's really turned ugly. Yeah, it sure did.

And especially because some of those who have been in the throng of of nastiness, and some even slanderous, are people who would wear the name

Reformed, and it's really disheartening. Well, brother, if it's all right, I'll lay a little foundation of what

I want to talk about today, because you do have a large and growing audience, and I also am a moderator on Facebook for a place called

Reformed Study of Church History, and we're enjoying a considerable growth as well.

We have about 11 ,000 members in the group. But in this particular subject,

I think it is greatly misunderstood, and that is counseling the awakened sinner.

So I just want to state in the outset that I'm only stating the facts. I'm stating the historical facts.

I'm not making anybody draw any conclusions. It's just what 30 years of study of this subject has taught me on it.

So I'll start it, if it's okay, by issuing a hypothetical question based on a historical fact.

The hypothetical question is, how would you counsel, if you were a pastor living in the days of Jonathan Edwards?

The date is July 8, 1741. The sermon is on Deuteronomy 32 -35.

It later became known as Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. From the historical accounts that we have of it, and I've only found two, and that is

Eleazar Wheelock, as it was communicated to Benjamin Trumbull in a book that became

The History of Connecticut, and a man named Stephan Williams, who was in the assembly, who kept a diary, and these two men were the only living accounts that we have of that sermon, but the effects of that sermon was that the crowd was under a great deal of duress.

Many people had been awakened at that time. What would it have taken to have been a pastor, and these people came up to you after the sermon?

We don't have the details, but they came up to you very, very agitated about the state of their soul, scared, knowing that they were not prepared to stand before God in eternity, and what do you say to them as a pastor?

Well, the first thing, of course, that you say is, it is your immediate duty to repent and believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ. That's standard. That has to be said, but what if at that point somebody is under this kind of agitation and fear, and they say,

I understand that's my duty, I can't. In fact, I have an enmity against this gospel.

My heart is only full of fear, and I will admit to you that I know that Jesus Christ is my only way out of this, but the only interest

I have in Him are mercenary motives. The only interest I have in a Savior right now is to get me out of hell.

I have no real compunction for my sins. I have no real godly sorrow.

I have no hunger and thirst after righteousness. All I have is a desire to escape.

So the question comes in, in counseling the awakened sinner, at that point, if you give him any other information to enlighten him, to assist him, at that point are you teaching preparationism?

And that's where historically the counsel of the Puritans, I believe, have been misunderstood.

It's a subject that I had written a 60 -page paper on over 20 years ago, and since then my pastor and Dr.

Joel Beakey wrote a book that I'm holding in my hand called Prepared by Grace for Grace, the

Puritans on God's Ordinary Way of Leading Sinners to Christ. So here's what's helpful.

You mean one of your pastors at Grace Emmanuel? Is the means to an end is not cause and effect.

In other words, as you pray, as you become attended to the preaching of the

Word, as you read books and good books on this subject, as you forsake your sins, the effect of that isn't regeneration.

It's a means that God usually employs for an awakened sinner so that he can understand what he knew of maybe theoretically before.

That is his utter inability to come to Christ by nature. But it's very important that we state this.

Not everybody comes to Christ in this way, and it's interesting. I bring this up because I'm about to teach a

Sunday school on Pilgrim's Progress. Christian did come to Christ with a great deal of difficulty.

There was some time before the evangelist talked to him with that burden on his back, before he got to the wicked gate.

He went through the flu of the spawn. He talked to worldly wise men, and even after he got through the wicked gate and was converted, it was for some time after that before he obtained assurance of salvation, and we believe that was at the point where Christian saw the cross, the burden fell off of his back and rolled into the ditch so that he never had to bear it anymore.

Now let me read something from John Owen. It's pretty interesting to me. Owen had a work called

The Forgiveness of Sin, an exposition of Psalm 130, and this is really helpful because Owen went through this type of awakening for five years himself.

Owen is counseling somebody who is awakened, and this person ultimately got saved and became a pastor of a church in rural

Northamshire. But he went to Owen for counsel, and Owen said, young man, pray.

In what manner do you think to go to God? Well, through the mediator, sir, answered Mr. Davis.

That is easily said, replied the doctor, but I assure you it is another thing to go to God through the mediator than many who make use of the expression are aware of.

I myself preach Christ. He continued some years when I had but very little if any experimental acquaintance with access to God through Christ, until the

Lord was pleased to visit me with sore afflictions in which I was brought to the mouth of the grave and under which my soul was oppressed with horror and darkness.

But God graciously relieved my spirit by a powerful application of Psalm 130 verse 4.

Now in pilgrim's progress, it's important to realize that faithful did not go through this, and in the second book,

Christiana did not go through this, but it pleases God for whatever reason to allow certain people prior to their conversion to go through an extensive time of what the

Puritans called a law work. Usually these are people who are used more afterwards that they could see what they are by nature in their innate self -righteousness, and then when

Christ is presented and only by the Holy Spirit, then they see him in a new way and they prize him.

They lay hold of him. There's no longer just mercenary motives to come to Christ.

They embrace him as prophet, priest, and king. And so the

Puritans have been misunderstood at this point because it is implied that what they did was too much for people upon their own efforts, and that there's a subtle Arminianism in this.

And it would take too long to even clear the Puritans on this, but in the

Freedom of the Will, Jonathan Edwards says, so far from God being obligated to listen to selfish cries for mercy, he says,

God has not made any positive promises of salvation or grace or any saving assistance or any spiritual benefit whatsoever to any desires, prayers, endeavors, striving, or obedience of those who before have no true virtue or holiness in their hearts.

Some object against God requiring as a condition of salvation those holy exercises which are the result of a supernatural renovation.

Edwards says in a sermon, rather, that sometimes it pleases God, and this is the title of the sermon, to make men sensible of their misery before he reveals his love and mercy.

And so what was interesting to me is, how have these things changed over time?

How did they change, for example, in books on evangelism that were written in the 1700s, for example,

The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul by Philip Doddridge, to 100 years later, were there any emphasis upon this utter inability of the sinner to come to Christ in books such as God's Way of Peace by Horatius Bonar?

And that's where I've become very interested in this, and it really helped, it's a really helpful transition into our next subject, and that is

Asahel Nettleton and the Second Great Awakening, and why his understanding of this caused him such concerns about Charles Finney.

So I'll take a breath and let you weigh in, Well, I guess you didn't hear me earlier, I was trying to ask you, when you said earlier that there was a book written on a matter involving this issue by Dr.

Beakey and one of your pastors, I interview one of your pastors quite often, as you know, Greg Nichols, but is this someone else you're speaking of?

Yes, we have a number of pastors, but Paul Smalley is called the teaching assistant for Dr.

Joel Beakey, and his master's thesis was on the subject of the

Puritans and the Preparatives for Regeneration, but even using the word

Preparative lands us in trouble if we don't properly understand that. Yeah, people might automatically think that you are talking about Provenient Grace or something like that.

Well, Provenient Grace would still imply that, you know, as the

Armenians use it, that God has done something, he has imparted something, that if a sinner acts on it, he ordinarily will be converted.

So we don't even accept the term Provenient Grace in that way. This is really helpful here,

William Shedd, Dogmatic Theology. We say that the sinner's agency in respect to regeneration is in the antecedent, that which goes before, work of conviction, not in the act of regeneration itself.

The Holy Spirit does not ordinarily regenerate a man until he is a convicted man, until in the use of the means of conviction under common grace he has become conscious of his need of regenerating grace.

To the person who inquires, how am I to obtain a new birth, and what particular thing am

I to do respecting it, the answer is, find out that you need it, and that your self -enslaved will cannot originate it.

And when you have found this out, cry unto God the Holy Spirit, create in me a clean heart, and renew within me a right spirit.

And this prayer must not cease until the answer comes, as Christ teaches in the parable of the widow and the unjust judge,

Luke 18, 1 -8. When men are convicted of sin and utter helplessness, they are a people prepared for the

Lord. So even as late as the late 1800s, some people still believe that God commonly makes men sensible of their misery before he reveals his love and mercy.

But how many of the Puritans, we might ask, went through this themselves? In the introduction to a book called

A Guide to Christ by Solomon Stoddard, the introduction is by Increase Mather, the father of Cotton Mather, they were both involved in the

Salem witch trials, and Mather said that there was a group of Puritans, some 15

Puritans, meeting in a room to discuss this very subject, the law prior to conversion, and of the 15, only two of them could name the day that they themselves were regenerated.

My point is, and what I've learned from this, is the ways of God in leading sinners to Christ are so very various that you can't stamp any one case upon any other person and say, if I haven't come to Christ that way,

I'm not converted. This is even a stumbling block to Jonathan Edwards, if you read his diary, that for a while he lacked assurance of salvation because he could not account that he had come to Christ in some ways that the

Puritans detail in their own conversion experiences. Let's try to clarify this for a moment, just so nobody has the wrong idea.

You are, I'm sure, I know that you're a Reformed Baptist, you believe that there is one gospel, there are not different gospels for different people, but the

Lord in his providence and sovereignty goes about drawing different men to himself with different circumstances.

Like, for instance, you have a circumstance like the jailer coming to salvation immediately after his prisoners have been miraculously set free from their chains.

That very night, not only did he come to faith in Christ, but he was baptized. And you have other people who it seems that their heart is over years perhaps being slowly chiseled away by the

Holy Spirit before you have someone finally collapsing to their knees and crying out to forgiveness.

So you're saying that there's one gospel, but there's different ways that the God... We're really not even talking about the conversion itself or regeneration.

What we are talking about in this is the conviction of sin prior to conversion, because you and I hold the same confession,

Chris, which in chapter nine, paragraph three says, um, neither can he prepare himself thereto.

There's nothing that he can do that he has reached a point that now there is something in him that is actually something that God's going to take notice of.

All we're talking about is that God allows a sinner, an awakened sinner, sometimes to go through this convicting process for a longer time to more empty of him of his self -righteousness, and then when the eyes of his understanding are enlightened, regeneration is a moment, a momentous act.

It's in a split second of time, but this is all the process that goes through that.

However, during this entire process, he hasn't made himself more virtuous.

In fact, Augustus Hopkins Strong well said, and he was a Baptist that died in the 1900s, that this is a hopeful sign, conviction, because it's better than a state of total obduracy.

However, until a person gives himself to Christ out of motives of love, he is never saved.

That a person is actually the most guilty that split second before he is born again, because against more light than ever, he is still withholding his heart from God.

But regeneration is all the work of God. We don't believe in synergistic regeneration.

Right, amen. God must work, and God alone. But sometimes, and you see this especially in revivals of religion, that someone may go through an extended time.

One of the finest narrations, narratives of these experiences is Jonathan Edwards, a narrative of many surprising conversions, showing how very various the awakenings are prior to somebody's, the eyes of his understanding, being enlightened, and him embracing

Christ in faith. So to embrace Christ out of love, the heart is already regenerated.

Conversion necessarily has to be the effect of the new birth.

The governing disposition of the heart has to be changed, or we can't embrace

Christ out of any motive of love. We actually are at enmity against him, Romans 8, 7. So I hope that cleared things up a little bit.

Well, one thing I think what you're saying, one thing that our listeners should take great hope in from what you're saying, is that just because they themselves may have had the light switch turn on by God very soon after they were evangelized, they should not lose hope and lose heart and be terrified and filled with anxiety when loved ones that they are evangelizing are not coming so quickly to embrace

Christ in his gospel. First of all, being Reformed, we know that that is up to God. We only plant seeds and water them, and God gives the increase, and he does so when he chooses.

But we are not to think that just because some people come quickly, that when others are taking years and years of either openly and adamantly rejecting the gospel, or just being indifferent, we shouldn't lose all hope for their souls while they're still alive, because they may be one of these cases that you're referring to.

God is just choosing for his own reasons that may always be remaining in his own mind until we're in eternity.

For some reason he chooses to take a longer period of time to convict and to soften the heart of a lost person.

Well, I'll give you a couple of historical examples. As best as we know, Sarah Edwards was converted around the age of five.

She did not have anything of this law work that the Puritans talk about in an extended time of conviction, and trying to come to Christ in her own selfish efforts, and so on.

Asa Hell Nettleton, who is the subject of our next hour, went through this for 10 months.

John Bunyan, some people think 18 months to five years. That's detailed in the book, Grace Abounding to the

Chief of Sinners. Spurgeon in his autobiography actually says that this went maybe as much as five years as a very young person, until 16 when he was converted going into that chapel.

Samuel Bolton, a Puritan, said that the convictions were so great for him he said that he lived for a while in a hell above ground.

So I'm just saying they're so very various, but my point is somebody who has to counsel someone that's under the type of fear that Samuel Bolton was under, or a person who had heard

Jonathan Edwards preach sinners in the hands of an angry God, after they have told them it is your duty to repent and believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, can he give him other counsels as a means to that end?

Because the person realizes his utter inability to embrace Christ on his own.

Whole books used to be written on this subject. John Angel James, who lived in the early 1800s, wrote a book called

The Anxious Inquirer. The entire book is to assist people who are under this awakening stage, what the

Puritans called a law work. I personally got interested in this when I very early on became a student of the books of Lloyd Jones, and he deals with this when he deals with the spirit of bondage and fear in Romans 8 verse 15 of his commentary on Romans.

Where I disagree with Lloyd Jones though is he thinks that Romans 7 14 to 25 is actually talking about a person in this awakened state.

For your listeners to remind you what that says, that which I would I do not, but the evil that I hate that I do.

If then I do that which I would not, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me.

Well, we believe that that's a Christian. We believe that that's a person who's wrestling with his indwelling sin, not a person who is awakened and seeking

Christ. So I disagree with Lloyd Jones on that point. But Lloyd Jones, being a student of the

Puritans, wanted to emphasize that the spirit of bondage and fear prior to the new birth is what the

Puritans called this law work, this time of conviction in sin where a person may be frightened, where a person may be seeking, where he doesn't find it all at once.

Right, we have a stark contrast for instance in the way Lydia the seller of purple had her heart opened up to hear and understand the things spoken of by Paul when she was just sitting in a bible study.

And then you have in the opposite extreme of conversions, you have Saul of Tarsus himself on the road to Damascus and having to have scales for him over his eyes and all kinds of things that the

Lord was using to just break him. Yeah. Well, you know, I don't know if you have to go to a break.

Yeah, actually we do have to go to a break, so hold your thought and we're going to be right back after these messages. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

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Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back.

This is Chris Sorens, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than 90 minutes to go is

Tom Sullivan, who operates Voice in the Wilderness Radio and Puritan Audiobooks.

We are discussing, during the remainder of this first hour, Council for the Awakened Sinner, and then coming up,

God willing, in the second hour, we'll be addressing the history of revivals in the Second Great Awakening prior to Charles Finney.

And our email address, if you'd like to join us, is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

And don't forget to always give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

But you were saying before the break, if you could pick up where you left off, Tom? Well, even as, okay,

I would put the dividing line where this doctrine seemed to change about the year 1850.

That's just something I'm throwing out there. There's a sermon on sermon audio that was preached in the 70s by Ian Murray called

Preaching in the 19th Century, and he makes the same dividing line. But William Sprague wrote a book called

Lectures on Revival, and this was written in 1832. And chapter six of that book is counsel that pastors need to give to people who have been awakened during this revival.

And Sprague says, Let him be admonished, first of all, that the duty of devoting himself to God by compliance with the terms of the gospel is of immediate obligation, and that he is guilty in becoming more and more guilty in the neglect of it.

Again, you are to put him on his guard against seeking salvation in the spirit of self -righteousness. But he is talking about seeking salvation.

So it was assumed that during a revival, often a person may go through this period of seeking out of mercenary motives, out of selfish motives, not out of virtuous motives, prior to coming to Christ.

And this is how this is a counsel that was given to them. There is no natural predilection in man for the gospel plan of salvation.

On the contrary, there is a strong original bias in favor of being saved by the deeds of the law.

So he's saying you must not trust in anything that you do prior to coming to Christ is that which will put you in a state in which you now are either more inclined to be regenerated or that God is going to take notice of it.

But still he's talking about seeking using the means of grace. In Luke 13, verse 24, it says,

Strive, that word, Greek word, of course, is translated from, the

English is translated from agonized, strive to enter in at the straight gate. For many

I say unto you will seek to enter in and shall not be able. So that's an amazing thing since regeneration is an instantaneous act and yet Christ is telling people to strive to enter into the straight gate.

Also the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and violent men take it by force.

That was the verse that Jonathan Edwards used in a sermon pressing into the kingdom where he's given instructions to those who are awakened in the use of these means.

Well what the Puritans would say and what is the subtitle of this book prepared by grace for grace is the

Puritans on God's ordinary way of leading sinners to Christ and that is to allow them to try to come to Christ in their own strength that they could see that they are not able to prepare themselves for it that man's extremity is

God's opportunity and after they realize they cannot bring anything to him they say nothing in my hands

I bring simply to thy cross I cling but there may be an extended period of time before they get to that point where they say

I realize salvation is of God and God alone that was the emphasis of such books such as the bruised read by Richard Sibbes commonly there is a bruising of the sinner prior to his coming to Christ to empty him of his self -righteousness that he would prize

Christ when God enlightens his understanding to lay hold of him and then he realized

God is the author of my salvation I cannot prepare myself there and do that everything that comes to me prior to regeneration is sin and so the

Puritan said that there may be an extended time where a person may go through that we have a listener in Dallas Texas Maggie who says

I'm not certain how anyone can get so specific about the motivations that draw them to conversion only

God knows the motivation of the heart how is it possible to say that one is not saved unless they came to Christ out of love for Christ I came to Christ at seven years old because I wanted to but also because I disliked my sin later because I feared and loathed my sin and was terrified of the loss of salvation through poor understanding is it this kind of you are not saved unless dot dot dot thinking making it less monergistic and more synergistic it's kind of interesting that you even brought up before how some might view what you're saying is arminianism but you are clarifying that it was not here's where the mistake is commonly made man has two problems before the living

God he comes into this world with two problems not one modern evangelicalism focuses on his bad record that is remedied by justification modern evangelicalism doesn't focus on his corrupt heart he has a bad record and he has a bad heart all we are saying is if you you don't have to look at the motives that you came to Christ if the fruits of that regeneration are there but the fruits are of regeneration that is hungering and thirsting after righteousness mourning for sin merciful meek and then as a result you'll be persecuted for righteousness those are the fruits of the new birth a corrupt tree cannot bring forth false fruits so as long as you see those fruits after you are regenerated you don't have to examine the motives that were in you prior to your coming to Christ but those fruits have to be there let me let me ask you a question that relates to what you're saying there are some of our brethren who wrongly uh and they have a very aberrant understanding of salvation that would be in a contradiction to the what has become known as lordship salvation they they you may hear someone say i came to christ when i was seven uh i remember i was at a bible camp and the youth leader told everyone if you want to go to heaven raise your hand and i went forward i raised my hand and i went forward as a seven -year -old boy but then uh by the time i was 12 i was uh an unrepentant alcoholic and then by the time i was 17 i was an unrepentant uh sexual deviant and i lived that way for 25 years and then one day i finally realized that i was a sinner in need of repentance and i rededicated my life to christ and they will think that they were saved all those years but in reality they were damned they were still lost in their their sins dead in their sins uh and they came to christ in in truth when they had that uh repentant heart that god had given them but just because that person wrongly views their history of having been saved when they were seven does not mean that they're not saved now it just means that they're very very wrong in the the journey that took them to the place where they are now am i is that making sense to you i'm so glad you brought this up because the whole lordship salvation i think is a misnomer because lordship is applied to salvation when we think of salvation we normally think of justification we're thinking of the guilt lordship should be tied back to the new birth in other words in the new birth three things are changed the will that was against god is inclined to obey him the enmity of the heart that we have by nature romans 8 7 is slain and now a person starts to obey god out of motives of love and the mind is enlightened ephesians 1 18 paul prayed to that extent so your mind was corrupt your will was disinclined and your affections were set against christ how does that apply to lordship um regeneration if you are born again you're no longer going to be disinclined to christ you're no longer going to be walking in darkness and you're no longer going to be at enmity against him so if i press somebody with that if you are still living your life at enmity against christ you need to be born again you need to have the governing disposition of your soul change by relating it to justification that's how they are able to cry legalism but regeneration is not a forensic term regeneration has to do with the corrupt heart the corrupt nature justification has to do with the criminal court not guilty if you are born again your mind your will and affections are changed you will bow the knee to jesus's lord a good tree bears good fruit properly but it's got to be there in some uh respect otherwise it's still a corrupt tree bringing forth corrupt fruit right yes as i was saying a good tree bears good fruit there's going to be uh some kind of an immediate response to regeneration not that those fruits are meritorious in any way shape or form but they are a they are a necessary evidence of the justification that truly saves well i want to go back to this lady's question because i know this is a stumbling block to her the puritans would teach that that moment that you embrace my faith you may not be looking at your motives for coming to him at all in fact your safety and what happened to you may be out of your mind completely you're taken up with god's great provision of a salvation in the lord jesus christ you have you are aware that you have an affection for the savior you're not looking at your motives you're looking at god's provision it's it's disinterested it's now focused upon what god has done and you're not looking inside and saying am i coming to christ all right i remember even in aw pink's commentary on john where he says about looking onto the serpent aw pink warrens don't look at your look don't look at your motives for coming to christ the bible just says look to christ but it will have those effects of the new birth you will be inclined to obey him you will love him and your mind will be enlightened now because it was in darkness before amen so so you know i'm just saying that because people get so uh caught up in these things and they begin to wonder well have i really in fact been born again did i come to christ out of the uh pure motive we just say what are the fruits now of your being born again there's going to be certain fruits amen if those fruits are there and they may be very weak and you may be like a tree in winter a tree in winter doesn't seem to manifest through leaves and so on but the tree is still alive there has to be something different between somebody who has been born again from above and somebody who is still dead in trespasses and sins so we look at the fruit of it not as a motive to come into christ but the effects of having come and you're also not talking about sinless perfectionism as if there's not going to be any remaining sin in the true convert to christ you're not i know that being a reformed baptist you don't believe that a true convert cannot fall into a period of sin some people call that backsliding uh but i'll put it this way if i believe that i wouldn't have narrated the 17 chapters of john owen on indwelling sin but we're starting to arrive you sit a little bit at that man's feet and realize that which i do i allow not but the evil that i hate that i do the key is sin no longer is the dominating principle it remains it doesn't dominate in a person who hasn't been born again all he can do is sin but when you're regenerated and it may be weak at first and you will mourn your uh lack of conformity to christ some indication of you're being brought from death under life has to be there we have another listener by the way thank you so much maggie in dallas texas keep listening to the program and keep spreading the word about iron sharpens iron radio in texas and beyond we have uh let's see we have a listener all the way in kinross scotland uh that is murray and uh please be patient as i enlarge murray's email because the font is microscopic and at 55 years of age i am still resisting buying expensive prescription glasses and i've got to change that soon i think i this is murray in kinross scotland i understand the interest and concern over the seeming lack of even an acknowledgement in modern writing that there is a possibility that god might leave a person under a period of conviction of sin before finding ease for the soul and conversion the only exceptions to this that i have found here in the uk are small denominations who seem to be rather heavily into introspection could a low view of god and a low view of sin be the answer as to why so few these days seem to have any concern for their souls at all when was the last time any of us heard someone weeping for their sins whilst we wouldn't want to wish a prolonged period of conviction of sin on anyone do we have the right to assume that god will never use such means these days he's obviously affirming what you're saying here right right well that's what richard sibbs says in the bruise read that many people become apostates afterwards because they were not bruised reeds before and sometimes when people are really brought into these depths you know john owen wrote the book forgiveness of sin because out of the matrix of his experience of going through five years of this kind of uh conviction but uh you know i know a little bit about the uh history in scotland i you know and i also want to guard against the other extreme of introspection when i was with you uh chris last time i mentioned the book and i still have not seen its equal called cases of conscience by samuel pike and samuel hayward which came out in the year 1755 and it's very very helpful for people going through these introspective states and i'm re -narrating that right now you can find it on my website puritan audiobooks .net

this is the type of questions that they deal with how can i tell if a promise or threatening that comes to my mind is of god or of the devil and they help you they assist you through those kinds of introspection to have a steady walk and to the degree that we seldom see in our day and i think a lot of times because christian experience is a lot more superficial so pastors didn't deal with cases of conscience at that level that's why we go back to um you know the puritans are things that were written in the 18th century and so on and even the end of philip doddridge's rise and progress of religion in the soul no i'm always trying to be conscious of people going through that that's why i have a facebook site that i created called thoughts by christian experience and assurance and i deal with some people that are really really in a state of despondency or what is written in pilgrim progress the flow of despondent try to help them out of that so they can have a more comfortable walk with christ amen um we're going to a break right now but i wanted to have you clarify something earlier on uh you mentioned another book and i don't know we understood each other uh i thought that you said that one of your pastors at grace emmanuel reform baptist church in grand rapids co -authored a book with joe beeky and i right and i i've interviewed uh pastor greg nichols many times is this a different pastor his name is paul smalley he has a master's degree in theology that oh paul smalley's at grace emmanuel right oh i attend grace emmanuel yeah right and uh we'll have to have uh pastor smalley on as well i've had as you know pastor nichols i've had on a number of times and in fact i have even a number more dates set up with him i believe i would i would love and i'd talk to paul smalley on your behalf for him to talk about this master's thesis written with dr beeky on the puritans and this whole subject because he gets into this way more detailed than i could possibly do uh in a 60 page paper or in this discussion that you and i are having and they clear up a lot of the misunderstanding yeah great we'll definitely uh speak with him and uh i will definitely uh schedule something if he is uh interested in participating we have to go to a break right now and if anybody would like to join us on the air our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

c h r i s a r n z e n at gmail .com please give us your first name city and state and country of residence if you live outside of the usa thank you very much murray and kenross scotland please keep listening to iron sharpens iron radio and spreading the word about the program in the united kingdom and beyond we'll be right back god willing right after these messages from our sponsors chef exclusive catering is in south central pennsylvania chef exclusives goal is to provide a dining experience that is sure to please any palate chef damian white of chef exclusive is a graduate of the renowned johnson and wales university with a degree in culinary arts and applied science chef exclusive catering's event center is newly designed with elegance and style and is available for small office gatherings bridal showers engagement parties and rehearsal dinners critics and guests alike acknowledge chef exclusives commitment to exceeding even the highest expectations i know of their quality firsthand since chef exclusive catered by most recent iron sharpens iron radio pastor's luncheon for details call 717 -388 -3000 that's 717 -388 -3000 or visit chef exclusive .com

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and click support at the top of the page but most importantly keep iron sharpens iron radio in your prayers we hope that iron sharpens iron radio blesses you for many years to come linbrook baptist church on 225 earl avenue in linbrook long island is teaching god's timeless truths in the 21st century our church is far more than a sunday worship service it's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant it's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement it's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing we're a diverse family of all ages enthusiastically serving our lord jesus christ in fellowship play and together hi i'm pastor bob waldeman and i invite you to come and join us here at linbrook baptist church and see all that a church can be call in brook baptist at 516 -599 -9402 that's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org

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that's liyfc .org paul wrote to the church at galatia for am i now seeking the approval of man or of god or am i trying to please man if i were still trying to please man i would not be a servant of christ hi i'm mark lukens pastor of providence baptist church we are reformed baptist church and we hold to the london baptist confession of faith of 1689 we are in nofolk massachusetts we strive to reflect paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how god views what we say and what we do than how men view these things that's not the best recipe for popularity but since that wasn't the apostle's priority it must not be ours either we believe by god's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of christ in truth and love if you live near norfolk massachusetts or plan to visit our area please come and join us for worship and fellowship you can call us at 508 -528 -5750 that's 508 -528 -5750 or go to our website to email us listen to past sermons worship songs or watch our tv program entitled resting in grace you can find us at providence baptist church ma .org

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forward slash iron sharpens today hi i'm pastor bill shishko inviting you to tune into a visit to the pastor's study every saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m.

eastern time on wlie radio www .wlie540am .com

we bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions our time will be lively useful and i assure you never dull join us this saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor welcome back this is chris arnzen if you just tuned us in our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than an hour to go is tom sullivan and we are going to be entering into a second topic momentarily the history of revivals in the second great awakening prior to charles finney we may have to wrap up a few matters in regard to counsel for the awakened sinner first but we'll be continuing our conversation with tom sullivan a voice in the wilderness radio and puritan audiobooks in just a couple of minutes but we have some important announcements to make first of all we have coming up in september the 29th and the 30th we have my friend dr tony costa of toronto baptist seminary is going to be on long island new york speaking at the word of truth church in farmingville long island new york a word of truth church in cooperation with the long island spurgeon fellowship present the gospel of the reformation a 500th anniversary celebration and as i said that will be friday and saturday september 29th and september 30th if you would like to register for that event it's a free event a love offering will be taken but there's no admission charge but if you'd like to register for that event due to limited limited seating i would go to wot church .com

to find out more information wot which stands for word of truth church .com wot church .com

or call 631 -806 -0614 631 -806 -0614 the very next day the first of october sunday october 1st at 11 a .m

dr tony costa will also be speaking at the hope reform baptist church of medford long island new york and if you'd like to get more details on attending that worship service go to hope reformed li .net

hope reformed li which stands for longisland .net or you can call 631 -696 -5711 631 -696 -5711 i strongly urge you to see and hear dr tony costa in person if at all possible he is a truly brilliant man of god and i value him enormously and i thank god for the blessing he is to the body of christ especially with the way that he uses his brilliant mind in the debating arena and i look forward to seeing him myself god willing at the end of next month then we have phil johnson who you've heard i'm sure many times on the iron sharpens iron radio program phil johnson is going to be at the grace bible fellowship church in harrisburg pennsylvania and he is going to be there on saturday september 30th and sunday october 1st so they're a little bit of a conflict there on dates so pick one of those dates and that best suits your geography phil johnson what a what a blessing to the body of christ he is as well the executive director of john macarthur's grace to you ministry you can find out more information at gracebfc .com

gracebfc which stands for bible fellowship church gracebfc .com

forward slash conference that will bring you right to the information about the reformation conference they're having with phil johnson uh and uh please uh if you uh go to either of those events or any of those events please let the anybody that is running these events know that you heard about them on iron sharpens iron radio by the way you could also call the folks at grace bible fellowship church in harrisburg pennsylvania and i'm getting the phone number right here right now the phone number is 717 -652 -5229 717 -652 -5229 and then coming up uh in november from the 17th through the 18th the alliance of confessing evangelicals is having their quakertown conference on reform theology that's going to be held at the grace bible fellowship church of quakertown pennsylvania and the theme is for still our ancient foe a reference to satan from martin luther's hymn a mighty fortress speakers include kent hughes peter jones tom nettles dennis cahill and scott olephant if you'd like to register for that event go to alliance net .org

alliance net .org click on events and then click on quakertown conference on reform theology and now we have also the uh we have the g3 conference coming up in january from the 17th through the 20th on the 17th it's going to be exclusively a spanish speaking edition of the g3 conference from the 18th through the 20th it's a it's an english speaking edition the g3 stands for grace gospel and glory this time around the theme is going to be knowing god a biblical understanding of discipleship and the roster includes stephen lawson vody baucom phil johnson keith getty hb charles jr tim challis josh bice james white tom askell anthony mathenia michael kruger david miller paul tripp todd friel derrick thomas and martha peace if you would like to register for the g3 conference go to g3 conference .com

g3 conference .com and once again if you contact them please let the folks running the g3 conference know that you heard about it from chris arens and an iron sharpens iron radio and now it's time for me to do that perform that unpleasant task of asking you for money those that advertise with iron sharpens iron radio and who have been keeping the program on the air have urged me to make these public appeals for donations and advertising if you love this program if it means a lot to you if you listen to it every day if you're edified by it please prayerfully consider giving to iron sharpens iron radio and as often as you can go to iron sharpens iron radio .com

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chrisarnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line we really need your help if we are going to remain on the air things are really thin lately in fact we were getting for a couple of weeks a few weeks a steady stream of donations coming in they seem to have dried up we did get a check a few days ago but it's a lot thinner than it used to be for a while when we first started making these announcements so please help us out if you can and pray for us more than anything we are now back to our discussion with our guest today tom sullivan of voice in the wilderness radio and puritan audiobooks and before we move on to the history of revivals in the second great awakening prior to charles finney is there anything that you need to wrap up on the council for the awaken center well first of all if any of our listeners want to see what i've written on this and they go to puritan audiobooks .net

and do a search on thomas sullivan there's a paper i wrote called the charge of preparationism and puritan councils examined from the puritans i go all the way through david martin lloyd jones but secondly i would invite you to come to our facebook site thoughts on christian experience and assurance because i have to help a lot of people that really struggle with assurance i mean there are the william coopers of the world that you and i talked about in our last time together chris um you know timothy rogers wrote a book on a treatise for melancholy and trouble of mind and so on we don't want people to stay in that uh state of um despondency doubting their salvation to the point i long to know off the cause of anxious thought do i love the lord or no am i his or am i not that was the hymn written by john newton so i would invite you because we'll uh talk about any kind of questions that you may have from this discussion as well thoughts on christian experience and assurance on facebook great well uh we are beginning now our new topic the second topic of the day the history of revivals in the second great awakening if you could before you even get into the meat of the topic uh this may seem like a silly question but i don't think it is could you define revival for us and then after that specifically explain what the second great awakening was in contrast to the first well revival first of all you want to define what declension is a declension is a falling off from the uh worship in a really spiritual time in a church in persons and so on entire books were written on that uh octavia swenslow the revival of declension in the soul and during the church there may be a time when there has been a declension a falling away even some of the doubts that go on um about the authenticity of all of these things and prior to the second great awakening it manifested itself in uh some of our seminaries for example few people know in yale seminary at the turn of the 19th century out of about 110 students only 10 percent of them even uh had a christian profession and so it marked uh seminaries like harvard and so on where unitarianism came in so the holy spirit came in a great measure upon not just individual churches but whole communities and it was noted as a great awakening because of the extent of the revival people coming out of this state of stupor this state of obduracy this state of indifference to eternal things to where as one person said it in a book on revival that came to boston that every word that the preacher preached the people were hanging on as if their very eternity depended on the proper hearing of it when revival is at that pitch you know that god has descended upon his congregation and conversions become multiplied and um some of the slackness the dullness and so on vanishes and it affects the entire community some of the sins that were very prevalent in northampton in the days of jonathan edwards like if he says frequenting the l house or night walking and so on we don't use those terms anymore but it will have visible effects in a community was the boston revival when uh boston uh broke free of the curse of babe ruth in 2004 just kidding oh they needed more in a revival they were spiritually dead i was just kidding actually dead anyway what what my concern is about the second great awakening is often it's misunderstood because of the aberrations that came in because of the preaching of charles finney and so whenever you mention second great awakening it already has a bad name for itself because people have lost the history that happened at the turn of the uh 18 19th century in the year 1800 there was a magazine to detail some of these revivals that were going on called the connecticut evangelical magazine started in the year 1800 bennett tyler who was the editor of the life of asa hell meddleton compiled a number of these revival accounts and they were published in a book called new england revivals as they existed at the close of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century compiled from the connecticut evangelical magazine but there were other works that were written about that time and the living leading authority on revival in our day um ian murray of course but also richard owen roberts uh has done extensive uh studies on and he published six of these volumes a number of years ago and they're still to this day they're not well known one of them is accounts of religious revivals in many parts of the united states from 1815 to 1818 joshua bradley the revivals of the 18th century particularly at compu fling now that was more of the first great awakening lectures on the revival of religion by the ministers of the church of scotland the boston revival of 1842 a brief history of the evangelical churches of boston by martin moore and one of my favorite authentic records of revival now in progress in the united kingdom 1859 and 1860 by william reed if you go to sermonaudio .com

and you look up any of those titles so much of this stuff i've already narrated because it's a history a lot of people don't know for example when timothy dwight the grandson of jonathan edwards became the president of yale seminary around the year 1800 and a great revival uh broke out in that seminary white actually took a number of students and invited to them to a special class that he was having to refute their unitarianism their deism and so on because infidelity had so marked the ranks of yale seminary that timothy dwight spent his first few years there talking to people who were aspirants to the ministry of all things to try to get them to believe the evangelical christian religion it had fallen off that bad well in the matrix of this was a student named asa l meddleton who came to yale seminary about the year 1807 and 1808 and meddleton originally had aspirations to the mission field he actually wanted to join himself with samuel mills and there were a number of people who had gathered about the time of ed and iron judson in what was called the haystack revival where a number of these men had gotten together to talk about revival and a great storm broke out and they put shelter under a haystack and started crying out to god for missions and asa l meddleton originally wanted to be part of that group and so he lived about the time of judson but providentially because of his health and a number of other issues he never went into the mission field and never totally lost that desire but where meddleton is interesting is what he learned from the first great awakening that he sought not to employ in the revivals that were under his ministry in the early 1800s he saw a number of the aberrations for example the mistakes of crying out in a congregation even edwards in his early ministry didn't check those things as he should and asa l meddleton saw that there was something that was called sympathy for example this is something that we have in common with animals if i yawn and you see me yawn it's going to cause you to yawn in a revival if somebody cries out in the middle of an assembly people may be agitated and affected by mere sympathy and there may be a movement in the congregation that isn't as a result of the conviction convicting power of the word but by the natural instinct that we have with one another yeah like especially when somebody is crying you might feel feel that sympathy and begin to cry yourself or at least tear up well it affects us certainly that's how we get our term rubbernecking when we see that there's a crash on the side of the road god has put this amazing faculty and emotion within us so that we can empathize one with another but if that is not checked and if if it's actually played upon as it was in the case of charles finney then you're going to have a number of false conversions so it was interesting as i began studying this that i found out that there were things that happened during the first great awakening that actually showed that certain aspects of it were not all that great there were a number of false conversions for example and this is detailed in a book called the constitutional history of the presbyterian church in the usa by charles hodge it's 100 pages called the great revival and he's talking about the rapid declension after the revival my question is i read that was was charles hodge possibly in damage control mode to an extent he was because one of the men that was greatly used in the first great awakening was gilbert tenet and gilbert tenet preached this sermon called the dangers of an unconverted ministry also nicknamed the nottingham sermon which caused a lot of agitation among presbyterian pastors because there were a lot of pastors during that time that actually filled a pulpit who were not born again so there is some damage control but because of charles hodge i did have to pay attention to what he wrote here he's going through the journals of jonathan edwards to discuss some of the things that happened after the revival in new england he says the present state of things in new england this is jonathan edwards is on many accounts very melancholy there is a vast alteration within two years god he adds was provoked at the spiritual pride and self -confidence of the people and withdrew from them and the enemy has come in like a flood in various respects until the deluge has overwhelmed the whole land so immediately there were you know unitarianism started to come in um what's interesting in the case of even jonathan edwards is when he wrote a narrative of many surprising conversions which was the first book on revivals that he wrote he says in the judgment of charity he believes that 300 people were converted a short time after this he's talking about this declension and if you know the history of jonathan edwards his congregation rose up against him and they voted him out of the pulpit and the whole thing was somewhat of a kangaroo court that he felt to go into right now well if this revival was completely pure how is it that if you had 300 converts in just a few years a number of them rose up against their own pastor well edwards um maturity and understanding revivals increased and that's why he wrote a treatise on the religious affections and thoughts on the present revival of religion and though he doesn't name him by name one of the people that edwards was warring against was james davenport who went from place to place getting a following and actually had the idea that he could tell whether somebody was converted or not merely by them giving their testimony and he became very censorious and started castigating pastors in the congregation as unconverted and telling the people that they needed to leave there well 50 years later nettleton is starting to be used and he's going to some of these places that became known as the waste places of connecticut and he's seeing the damage that was wrought by the enthusiasm using the term that that was employed in those days how it had wrought such damage to the congregations and to that day 50 years later many of these churches didn't have pastors and so on and nettleton was really astute trude and a student of jonathan edwards writings and he thought so carefully during the second great awakening that he was going to avoid meticulously some of the things that happened in the first great awakening so that they would not be repeated and so that's where my one of the reasons um i took such an interest in him because i'm always interested in the people that god uses during the revival but somehow nettleton has become in our day the forgotten evangelist i was told that if you go into there's a book on nettleton by john thornberry oh yeah is it the wolf of scotland yeah he makes mention that if you go into wheaton college there's a prominent picture on display of charles finney but if you go into the theological institution that nettleton helped to form he said he went there when he was writing the book and there was he knew there was a picture done of nettleton that used to hang on the wall there and he looked for it and found it up in the attic gathering dust and he said that's what history has done to asa hell nettleton it has forgotten this man who was so used that god maybe in the judgment of charity 30 ,000 converts and so on and it remembers charles finney instead and you know if anybody wants to do further study of nettleton and those conversions of course we would recommend anything that dr michael haken does and he has some studies on this very subject on sermon audio but i was interested in that this part of the 19th century had been so forgotten in our day yeah in fact i made an error the uh john uh thornberry book is god sent revival that's the book right right we're talking about the same i knew we were talking about the same person yeah uh john uh i miss john dearly i haven't spoken to him in years but he uh uh was one of my favorite speakers at bible conferences that i used to attend here in pennsylvania and i've interviewed him a number of times but uh it's uh been too long i've got to try to get him back on in fact one of the best books he ever or should i say one of my favorite uh biographies that i ever read by him was uh a pastor in new york the life and times of spencer cone i don't know if you've ever read that but you've got i haven't no thanks for the heads up well we have to go to a break right now it's our final break and it will be briefer than the last if you would like to join us now is the time to do it because we're running out of time our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com

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and click support at the top of the page but most importantly keep iron sharpens iron radio in your prayers we hope that iron sharpens iron radio blesses you for many years to come welcome back this is chris sorensen and we are now in the final 25 minutes or so of our interview with tom sullivan of voice in the wilderness radio and puritan audio books we are discussing the history of revivals in the second great awakening prior to charles finney if you'd like to join us on the air the question of your own now is the time to do it before we run out of time our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com

chrisarnsen at gmail .com we have a question from christopher from suffolk county long island new york and christopher asks i have heard that revivals sometimes have different means that are the catalyst sometimes more predominant is the preaching sometimes more predominant is the praying is this the case with the first and second great awakenings oh that's a great question i want to share a story about jonathan edward's sermon sinners in the hands of an angry god that is not well known that emphasizes the importance of prayer prior to conversion and god owning that means in our first hour i talked about a diary that was written um by stephan williams that's kept in a library now it's been digitized and he was one of only two people that i can find that recorded anything about the revival that came upon infield connecticut what is often forgotten in that history is that we read the words of the sermon and we say man this is so powerful of course revival broke out what people forget is jonathan edwards in infield connecticut never finished that sermon and the reason i wanted to look in the diary is i wanted to see if there is any hint of how far he got into that sermon before he um actually had to hold his arms up in the air he couldn't be heard he had to desist because the convictions were so great there was such an outcry such welling in the congregation they didn't have microphones jonathan edwards couldn't finish that sermon but the little detail that's messed in that historical account is that the neighboring people fearing that the revival that had come to the communities around them would not come to infield connecticut spent the evening before god on their faces in prayer and people miss that little historical event that is so important because if the holy spirit had not come upon that congregation that revival that sermon itself could not create a revival it was preached in front of his own congregation without this kind of visible fruit it was preached in other places according to george marston's biography of jonathan edwards called the life without that visible fruit but the fact that the people would not let god go until he blessed him and they spent the night before on their faces in prayer god visit us like you did in southampton and other congregations and cities around us that the prayer was a means that was employed is that which brought revival onto infield connecticut so yes prayer is a means to that end and we forget that historically because his sermon has even been put in american literature books and everybody is so fascinated by the sermon and they forget the prayer that went up to god the night before that sermon was preached i hope that's helpful anyway oh yeah praise god for that um the uh let's see we have uh rj in white plains new york uh rj in white plains new york says what was it about the second great awakening that seems to have created the soil from which many of the cults sprang like mormonism christian science and adventism well um you know i don't know a lot about that history but i do want to bring in a detail that will be part of this and that is the difference between what was called the inquiry room and the anxious bench asa hull nettleton when he finished the sermon and saw a of people under duress would invite them after the sermon to a separate room maybe even in a separate building and they would sit in a chair and he would go from person to person in a voice so low that their neighbor could not hear and he would give them counsel about their awakening what they should do try to remove obstacles out of the way and so on but finney started using using what was called the anxious bench where that person may sit on this chair in front of a number of people and be moved merely by emotion and sympathy and so as these elements started to come into the revivals that were called the new measures because it wasn't just that it was protracted meetings where the meeting was extended all night long and pressure would be placed upon the person's will that they would not leave without quote making a decision these are the type of things that nettleton avoided uh so meticulously so seriously and so in some of these um revivals that happened under finney and some of the things that resulted i think that it may have opened the door for some of these cults because a lot of these cults really are not centered upon god they're centered upon a certain man and they have the ability to lure people to them because they have a dynamic personality and so they start to communicate ideas and people think this man has received a vision from god or this person has some new revelation and so on and i wouldn't want to let uh you know lump finney in with that crowd but i'm saying the potential is there when the revival became more man -centered and people did not any longer believe one and the total inability and total depravity of the center and secondly is that if a person is to be born again it's god's work and god's work alone we can't force it by manipulating the will or putting pressure upon a person to make a decision by the way why the hesitancy to include finney amongst them because from what i have learned from uh the uh the minor research i've done especially when i uh was preparing for an interview with my friend jerry johnson who created and produced an excellent documentary on finney it does seem to be clear from finney's own writings that he had more of a pelagian gospel than roman catholicism has he he seemed to be just in fact jerry johnson uh i don't know if you would agree with this he called uh finney a monergist not a good kind of monergist that attributes all the glory to god for salvation but he uh attributes he attributed all the glory to man for salvation and not even uh enough of god's involvement to be considered a synergist i don't know if you agree with it i understand where he's coming from because um i remember a statement in a strong systematic theology about finney and that is that he believed that a pastor preached with enough pathos emotion and feelings that he could change the will just like the holy spirit but then everything is based upon this uh emotionalism and so on the will isn't actually changed but it is impressed so yeah i can understand him uh stating that that's uh monergism on man's side we have a bb in cumlin county pennsylvania who asks i don't know if you address this or not but do you recommend ian murray's book revival and revivalism oh without a doubt i am simply astounded at the research that murray puts into a single uh book um the it would be easily easily the equivalent of a phd dissertation the amount of uh research that um murray did on the revivals that led up to the time of finney and so on and i did uh read a good amount of that before i taught on asa held meddleton i have often told people if there's anybody i would love to sit down with and pick their brain for hours at cn murray but he's getting up there in years now i mean you got to remember even the banner of truth is now 62 years old so he's in his mid 80s the closest i can get to picking someone's brain like that is dr kurt daniels who i enjoy talking to historical events as well but i have the highest respect for uh ian murray and i'm far more in agreement with him on his analysis of the evangelicalism of jonathan edwards than i would be on uh you know george marston and others who they helped us so much in the historical background details but to understand uh jonathan edwards means uh in his sermons and so on it takes someone like ian murray who's steeped in the puritans to really bring that out i i've always held him in the highest esteem and i've only got to meet him twice and very shortly at that yeah i had the privilege of meeting him as well he preached at a conference at grace reform baptist church in merrick long island where i used to be a member before relocating and it was a real joy in fact his conference was on revival and revivalism was on his book it may have been right on the uh the heels of that book coming into print uh uh when he uh when he came out to the united states and to specifically grace reform baptist church of long island america but in fact he he contrasts he compares and contrasts asahel asahel nettleton and charles finney in that book you know uh for a lot of us reform baptist and i i came a little later on i would be called a second uh generation i started going to reform baptist church in 1984 but very early on we became familiar with ian murray's teaching on revival because he did a conference and i can't remember exactly where it was in the 1970s and those uh five sermons on the history of revival are on sermon audio and i used to listen to those tapes continually and that's how i learned of names like uh benjamin trumbull in his history of connecticut and wh foot and his uh history of virginia was because of the research that ian murray had done on those things and i said you know i want to find those historical accounts for myself and have them in my library and i just i feel such a debt to ian murray uh historically to give me such a desire to study these things well thank you bb uh so there's your answer go out if you don't already have it yet revival and revivalism by ian murray and by the way you can get that from carmel and valley bible book service who happens to support iron sharpens iron radio go to cvbbs .com

cvbbs .com and i'm sure that either they have it in stock or they can certainly order it for you um well uh some of the um if you could uh continue to contrast compare and contrast true from false revival before we run out of time and even the use of the term you know you know as well as i there are a lot of fundamentalists and even pentecostals and charismatics who will actually announce that they are having revival this sunday or something like that which is a misuse of the term in its authentic meaning if you could i was um really steeped in the history of the first great awakening very very early on one of the first books that i bought uh was a book on uh revival by jonathan edwards that was uh published by trinity book service and so i started to study that in great detail so when the toronto revival started to make the headlines i was so shocked at this pastor one of the pastors behind this work tried to defend his laughing revival from uh quotes taken from jonathan edwards and really sum it up and i've explained this to other people the one thing you see about revival is just the opposite of laughter that a lot of times there's fear dread but uh standing before this god with whom we have to do ian murray says it like this it resembles a battlefield sometimes where a number of people are lying around the battlefield as if they have been shot they're so taken up with eternity and if they're not converted their own sins i had mentioned a book called authentic records of revival now in progress in the united kingdom 1859 by william reid on page 22 my mind is uh quoting from memory is a article by adam mcgill all of these things have been narrated they're on sermon audio if you want to look at these titles he was in boviva ireland and this uh revival came upon the congregation about 1858 1859 it was at a prayer meeting the people were let out it's uh let's see about nine o 'clock in the evening they could not be prevailed upon to finally go home until 3 30 in the morning the pastor says that if the death angel went through the city and took out the firstborn of every family the uh boviva ireland would not have been more serious by that than they were during this revival they were so affected with the presence of god and he details this in a number of cases and there were two people that came under such conviction of sin that he says one person cried out like a demoniac fearing that he was going to drop into hell and another person was under such conviction before this god with whom he wasn't reconciled that he bled from his nose in his mouth he was just so largely afraid and you know these things are recorded but they are forgotten and in our day there's a history revisionism that goes on that the great awakening and this awakening never really in fact happened even in this city there are articles that are written against praying um for revival from the protestant reform pastors i won't name names but i'm shocked at this because it is a terrible thing to see that kind of fear but only it gives us hope because if it doesn't start there the good news isn't good uh when a revival comes upon a congregation those fears and that dread that's what the wicked are going to feel before god on the day of judgment anyway if you read a book the banner of truth put out 1907 the korean revival they talk about this where a pastor says i don't even know if i would want to go through this unless it was the will of god because it was so amazing that people would stand up in the congregation confessing their sins as if standing before the presence of god just odd and they knew that they needed to be reconciled to christ that is a far different thing than a laughing revival or slaying in the spirit or some of these abominations that get um publicity and so on and people think that that's a real revival the thing that's missing is that fear that dread of almighty god when the holy spirit comes on a congregation if you're not reconciled to christ you are not going to feel really pleasant at first because you're his enemy until you're reconciled to him and our god is a consuming fire hebrews 10 31 such a contrast from some of the things going on in our day or any idea that we can get up revival by announcing that we're going to have a revival meeting at this church this day the following day and the third day no these men of the past taught that revival is a sovereign work of god displayed and dispensed how he sees fit for his own purposes and it's a far different thing than so much of what's purported as revival in our day oh yes i can recall uh hearing um my friend who just went home to glory for eternity with christ very recently just a matter of days ago peter jeffrey who uh was at one time the pastor of sanfields in port talbot wales the church where martin lloyd jones once pastored yeah i know the yeah and he was discussing the welsh revival how uh the the uh owners of mines uh were discovering tools and wheelbarrows and all kinds of things that were being returned to the mines after they were stolen by the workers because the uh there was a change of heart to transformation in many of these people and they were under the conviction of sin well i heard a story and this is uh from the 70s uh so it goes back a little bit to an interview with somebody that was actually alive during the welsh revival and somebody talking to him says it must have been great to be a preacher during that revival and he says great to be a preacher we didn't want to preach we all wanted to hide well i want to make sure that you have about five minutes of uninterrupted time to summarize everything that you want to say today before we run out of time i really would encourage uh your listeners to study church history and the uh the older things i mean you know from the reformation on to the middle of the 19th century there's so much of this information that has been lost and it's becoming oblivious people just don't know about the great works of christ in america to use the words of cotton mason they don't know some of the incredible things that god has done in our past and as this country is becoming more and more corrupt there's such a revisionist history that's going on that if you want to really realize what has happened you've never been in a time period where this stuff is more available there's something called a print on demand for example that they have something called the espresso book machine they can take any pdf book from google .books

.com they can print that book out for you in five minutes we have one here on 28th street at schuller books and you can get some of these books like the connecticut evangelical magazine you might not be able to find it in a used bookstore but i'd love to see young people who are hungry to study these things out what happened in england and in america and wales and so on at the turn of the 1700s 1800s and so on the dogs are objecting i guess hahaha isn't uh one of the signs of a genuine revival not only the evidence of repentance but that a lasting repentance you you may have people who emotionally initially respond with what appears to be repentance people who start coming to worship services at a church that they beforehand where they never darken the doors of these places and you have uh enthusiasm about christianity uh in some level or perhaps just the religion uh an enthusiasm of a religion because of the benefits of it uh but uh isn't uh sometimes these things fade away rather quickly and the then the uh leaving the evidence the revival wasn't really genuine well one of the things i think chris that marked that would mark a number of young men if revival really came again to our churches is the desire of these young men to go into the mission field to have the kind of aspirations that aden arm judson had or asa hell meddleton or samuel mills or samuel not or some of these people that they want to take the gospel that is so precious to them that has become their life and they want to communicate to those who haven't heard it before i would think that that would certainly be a fruit of revival it would certainly be a hopeful sign when we could see young people in our congregations aspiring again to the ministry and to the mission field and uh you know prayers to that uh respect and to that end even if you're a lady and you know you aren't called to be a pastor certainly if real revival came to it's going to affect your prayer life i hope that answers your question amen well i'm going to make sure that um we have uh our listeners have all of your contact information before we run out of time uh i know that uh the puritan audio books the puritan reformed audio books can be found at puritan audiobooks .net

puritan audiobooks .net and wilderness radio can be found at wilderness radio .com