Reports of Revival in America

In the 2000 years of Christianity, American churches seem unique at having blended big special calendar events with the assembling and worship of a church.  If America were ever to end, churches won't keep trying to integrate church with July 4th.  It wouldn't work any more.

Of several patriotic themes, church leaders harmonize national revival with their preaching and their programs.  Sub-categories to national revival have been titled the first and second great awakenings. These are treated as biblical in proportions and often added as sources for doctrine and practice. Many, including myself, reject the second as a great or even an awakening, more of a source of some of the most serious errors in the whole world since.  Jonathan Edwards criticizes even the first in his Treatise on the Religious Affections.

Most orthodox, conservative biblical theologians agree the first great awakening was the great awakening.  From a human perspective, the first was great, and all sorts of benefits to America have been tied to its results.  Even while the first was occurring, folks attempted to get on the bandwagon through various means, producing unbiblical works and consequences eschewed by Jonathan Edwards.

The great awakening was no kind of contrived plan orchestrated by people looking for an event. There was no yearning for a previous experience, because one hadn't been had.  America needed a great awakening and was ready for it.  George Whitefield came and preached, not impersonating anything.  It happened.

Whitefield didn't need a song man, building the atmosphere with his stirring music.  Whitefield exposed scripture with dense salvation theology.  He gave strong biblical explanation of the gospel.

The second came from men who tried to cook the first from a box.  It was happening whether it was happening or not, so it happened, even though it didn't.  It didn't happen, but it was said to have happened.  What didn't happen was celebrated as though it did.  This has occurred and occurs, that is, men calling and then celebrating something like it did happen, when it didn't.  If it could happen once, it can happen again and again.

The box says that you know you've got an awakening, a revival, if you see a certain size of results:  big crowds, numbers of professions, and emotion. The second emphasized revival techniques to bring hearers to immediate decision using new measures intended to heighten emotions. The crowds and the professions grow.  That validates it as a revival.  Why do some people get this experience when others don't?   The explanation is a man with power, people who want it more and for a longer period than others.

You might hear, "They prayed fifteen years for this and now it has come."  The parallel in the theology of revivalism is that saints prayed in Jerusalem for a period and then got the answer in Acts 2, attempting to make that event normative as a revival.  You hear the same language:  the Holy Spirit has come down, has visited, has been poured out.  Part of the scenario is also a meeting.  It has to be people traveling in to meet.  Some sort of daring, bold, abnormal consciousness is reached, alive in an atypical fashion.

Let's say you had an obedient church.   A true gospel was being preached everywhere in town and even beyond.  The people are growing.   The people are evangelizing.  That church, however, isn't seeing the crowds, professions, and emotion, so a revivalist observes that it's missing something.  However, if everything experienced was all good, and revival is good, why can't that be revival?  

God isn't good enough.  Obedience isn't good enough.  The Bible isn't good enough.  There's always got to be something more.

Many different sources (one, two, three) report revival in Burlington, NC with "Evangelist" C. T. Townsend, based on the same superficial criteria for the second great awakening.  After everything proceeding from the second, one would think that folks would have learned.  Just like people sought for a second after the first, the discontent perpetuates itself.  So much is wrong here.

Can we stop looking for revival across America, like this is part of our national heritage, and start looking for believing the Bible and obeying it?  Revivals will come when they come.  If they don't, all you're left with is believing the Bible and obeying it. That's enough.

I come back to July 4th.

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As an addendum to this post, I have experienced "revival."  My senior year in high school, I attended a large Christian school that began a fad at the time (it might still be happening) called "school camp."  The entire school would pack up and go to camp the first week of school and hear revivalist preaching morning and evening.  The camp schedule left very little time for sleep, so everyone would be very weary.  Besides "preaching" with a main emphasis on emotional manipulation, there was the use of the invitation.

As I look back at my high school years, a majority of 150 or so students were unconverted.  Out of the 45 graduates in my class, I'm the only either pastor or missionary.  My experience was that many of the students in our school were worldly and ungodly.

During the week of school camp, by the estimations of many, we experienced revival.  Seventeen students made professions of faith.  At the end of the week, there were many very emotional testimonies to how God had changed their lives.  As I lived through the rest of that senior year, I guarantee you that very little changed, including in almost all of the lives of those who made professions of faith.  However, we had "revival."

What I'm saying is that I know what "revival" looks like.  I mean "revival," and not actual revival. What people call revival and seek in the way of revival, I experienced that.