Understanding Awakening: Genuine Faith and Spiritual Renewal

Awakening, I mean we're dealing with historical phenomenon, something described in Scripture as Sinclair did so well from Acts and Steve here from Nehemiah, but it's not as if there's necessarily a confessional definition of what awakening has to mean. So, I think historically it was used to describe, though, sometimes somebody moved from being nominal, as Christians were in the Western world in the eighteenth century, to being a converted, now awakened Christian. [00:01:02]

When the Puritans in the middle of the eighteenth century talked about what came to be known as the Great Awakening in America and in Britain, what they meant by that was a period of intensified religious interest that may or may not lead on to conversion in the hearts of individuals who were awakened. [00:02:20]

Jonathan Edwards addressed that. In 1741 he gave the commencement address at the College of Connecticut, which became Yale, and he took 1 John 4:1 through 6, and he drew out of that. In fact the whole campus was in turmoil. The board of trustees were meeting the day before and the student body was very excited, many of them for the Great Awakening and the trustees, some of them were kind of stodgy, older ministers and were resistant and it was kind of that old school, new school debate, and "Is this of God, is it not of God?" [00:05:48]

And Edwards took 1 John 4:1 through 6 and pulled out five distinguishing marks of a genuine, authentic awakening. And previous to those five distinguishing marks, he gave -- I think it was ten, it could be as few as eight, that if you see this, it doesn't necessarily mean that there is a genuine awaking, one of which was a show of emotion. [00:06:30]

The Great Awakening was briefer from --- usually dated around 1740 to 1746. It tended to be in many places more emotional outbursts, people crying out, falling down, weeping. George Whitefield was asked once, "Why don't you control your meetings better? Why do you allow so much emotion?" It was probably some Dutchman who asked that question, and Whitefield's response was, "No one is surprised at someone weeping at a funeral, why should you be surprised at people weeping over the death of their own souls?" [00:10:40]

The Second Awakening was a good bit longer. It was over several decades, less often emotionally intense and the beginning of a more mixed-American kind of revivalism where some of the leaders were Reformed and some of them were Arminian, so that would be some ways of thinking about some of the differences. [00:12:51]

I don't think Iain Murray is either, but that sort of nomenclature, there were revivals that you couldn't plan for, the Spirit came in the sovereign outpouring and work of awakening, which gave way into the nineteenth century to a kind of revivalism, you know, most egregiously with Finney's new measures, you could plan for it, there were dedicated steps you could do, you could, you know even in our times we are used to announcing a revival, a revival this Saturday, if only it were that easy to just hang the banner and then revival would come. [00:13:34]

Godfrey: Well, I think if we look historically, we can say that part of the reason "reformation" became the label of what happened in the 16th century is a great deal of time and energy had to be devoted to the reforming of the externals of the life of the church -- how the church worshiped, how the church educated, how the church catechized -- almost everything had to be redone. [00:15:54]

But when the Reformation was over, particularly Reformed people thought the external life of the church now was conformed to the Word of God, the question is, are hearts really connected to this purified external form of religion? And so the focus shifted away from how do we -- I mean the Reformation was very much concerned about hearts as well as externals, but once those externals were properly reformed according to the Word of God, then the great concern tended to be, are people going to Reformed churches just going through the motions? [00:16:29]

Godfrey: Not ordinarily. DeYoung: Is there an extraordinarily? In the womb. Godfrey: Well, godly parents may believe without doubt that their children dying in infancy are elect and saved. Ferguson: For what it's worth, the Westminster Confession of Faith says, "God effectually calls infants and those who are uncapable of hearing and understanding the Word of God," by which it means, and if you were wandering around England or for that matter Scotland, they were in every village, people who were so mentally incapacitated, physically damaged, that people thought they may not be able to understand the preaching of the Word. [00:21:54]

What it means is that God ordinarily brings people to Christ through the preaching of the Word, but the Westminster Divines thought, without defining it fully, that there were exceptions to that. On the other hand, when they thought about, so what does that mean for the world, I think what most of our Reformed fathers thought is, "There is no reason we should have a broad hope that anyone who has never heard the gospel will come to faith as a result of regeneration." We know God can do what God can do. [00:23:19]

Lawson: Sure, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ, Romans 10:17. I don't think we should have any expectation or hope that someone is regenerated apart from the Word of God, and those who have never heard of Christ are perishing. Adam's sin has been imputed to them. They're a part of the fallen human race. They are rejecting general revelation. The condemnation of a just and holy God is upon them. They're not innocent. They're not in no man's land. [00:24:14]