The Lords

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(No Transcript)
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Restoring the teaching of the Lords Gospel,
and the characteristics of His church,
after centuries of abuse and alteration
33 A.D.
The Lords original teaching about
His church, the body of the saved
Distorted and corrupted through the
centuries by human weakness,
ignorance and rebellion
against Gods revealed will
The Lords original teaching about
His church, the body of the saved
Do not go beyond what is written. - 1 Cor 46
2007 A.D.
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In all 13 Colonies we see
A strong commitment to individual religious
liberty Constitutional guarantees of
religious freedom of freedom from
persecution The seeds of the coming
eradication of established churches or state
religions A newly-freed society wide open to
public, hon- est study of the Scriptures,
which they could read for themselves
A fierce commitment to the Scriptures that, over
time, created an environment in which Bible
knowledge and true restorationists could flourish.
When OKelly, Jones, Stone, the Campbells,
others like them came on the scene, the
groundwork already had been laid by the events
people of the century before them.
Such men faced a great challenge of dealing not
with just 1 non-N.T. church, but also with many
new ones spawned out of the Reformation Movement.
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Many centuries of appeals to only Scripture and
to the authority of the apostles.
Jude 3 the faith was once for all handed down to
the saints
1 Cor 46 Do not go beyond what is written.
Eph 44 There is one body
1 Cor 110 all of you agree with one another so
that there may be no divisions among you and that
you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.
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Such men faced a great challenge of dealing not
with just 1 non-N.T. church, but also with many
new ones spawned out of the Reformation Movement.
But this great diversity, though it thrived on
religious division, also helped set the stage
for the work of men truly dedicated to restore
men to the original teaching practice of the
Gospel. These differing groups existed because
men were free to study decide for
themselves a new historical phenomenon This
freedom gave birth to another new phenomenon,
the revival meetings, in which preachers
publicly boldly preached their new
findings, placing emphasis on ones personal
choice before God. -This rejection of
Catholicism Calvinism opened wide the door
for teaching person- al responsibility to
know the Gospel and to respond to it from
the heart.
From this setting arose the First Great
Awakening in the American colonies in the 1730s
and 1740s.
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The First Great Awakening 1730s and 1740s
This was a religious revival movement that swept
the American colonies, resulting from powerful
preaching aimed at convincing men of their
personal guilt and of their need of salvation
through decisive action by "experiencing God in
their own way They, not God, were responsible
for their own actions were able to work
out their own salvation (Phil 212).
Rejecting ritual and ceremony, it made
religion intensely personal to the average
person by creating a deep sense of spiritual
guilt redemption . It brought Christianity to
the slaves It challenged the established
authorities. It incited division between the
revivalists (New Lights) and those who
insisted on the established doctrines rituals
(Old Lights). It focused primarily on people
who already were church members.
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The First Great Awakening 1730s and 1740s
Jonathan Edwards (in Massachusetts) from
Puritan, Calvinistic background, emphasized
the importance and power of immediate, personal
religious experience. George Whitfield
(visiting from England) traveled through the
colonies and preached in a dramatic,
emotional style, offering a new view of how one
gains citizenship in the Kingdom of God. The
key test of one's election, Whitefield
asserted, was whether one had had an emotional
experience of conversion.
In a sermon he preached in Philadelphia he looked
to heaven and asked W Father Abraham, whom
have you in heaven? Any Episcopalians? God
No! W Any Presbyterians? God No! W Any
Independents or Methodists? God No, No, No!
W Whom have you there? God We don't know
those names here. All who are here are
Christians. W Oh, is this the case? Then God
help us to forget your party names and to
become Christians in deed and truth.
One sermon told about a woman who was dying.
Just before she died, she raised up on her death
bed, and instead of asking about Christ, asked .
. . "Whats trumps?" This led him to launch
into a sermon about the evil of playing cards.
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The First Great Awakening 1730s and 1740s
Jonathan Edwards (in Massachusetts) from
Puritan, Calvinistic background, emphasized
the importance and power of immediate, personal
religious experience. George Whitfield
(visiting from England) traveled through the
colonies and preached in a dramatic,
emotional style. People affected by the revival
began to study the Bible at home and became
passionately emotionally involved in their
religion they felt they had been brought back to
spiritual life as they felt a greater
intimacy with God.
Its interesting that all this was happening at
the same time as the colonies were rejecting the
political authority of England. 1. Did the zeal
for religious freedom impact the zeal for
political freedom, or did the zeal for
political freedom impact the zeal for
religious freedom? 2. Is it possible that this
demand for personal religious liberty was an
under-support, or even a cause of, the spirit
that led to the Revolutionary War?
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Phases of the First Great Awakening
In the North, where it began, revivals tended to
be an urban phenomenon where flamboyant and
highly emotional preaching appeared in Puritan
churches. One notable truth reclaimed there is
that the church is nothing greater than a body of
saints.
In the South, it was more of a frontier
phenomenon than was the case in the Middle
Colonies or New England. In the mountains of
Virginia and North Carolina the revival had a
wide open field. The people lived in isolated
rural areas where the established churches found
it difficult to exercise control or discipline.
The revival preachers would gather huge crowds,
often so large that they would have to preach
outdoors.
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Some Results of the First Great Awakening
1. It unified about 80 of Americans in pursuing
a personal knowledge obedience of the
Scriptures, not allowing the established
religions to dominate them. 2. Dissent and
dissenters enjoyed greater respect than ever
before. Baptists, Methodists, and
Presbyterians--all non-established groups--took
root and grew. 3. Great emphasis was placed
on education. George Whitefield founded the
school that would latter become the University of
Pennsylvania, and UNC was originally a
Presbyterian effort the first generation of
faculty members there all were Presbyterian
ministers. The focus on education was
rooted in a concern for souls. 4. A greater
sense of responsibility for Indians and slaves
emerged. 5. It reinterpreted the meaning of the
covenant between God and man. The Puritans
focused on what God does for us. The Awakening
focused on what man has to do in response to
God's great offer of salvation. 6. People
affected by the revival began to study the Bible
at home and be- came passionately
emotionally involved in their religion they felt
they had been restored to spiritual life
and felt a greater intimacy with God.
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The Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s
Largely a frontier phenomenon, this movement
introduced a new form of religious expressionthe
camp meeting a religious service of several
days length with multiple preachers.
Settlers in thinly pop- ulated areas
looked to the camp meeting as a
refuge from the lonely life on the
frontier. The sheer exhilaration of
participating in a religious revival with
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inspired
the dancing, shouting, and singing associated
with these events. Most of the converts joined
small local churches, which grew rapidly into
much larger churches.
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The Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s
This Awakening marked an important break from the
Calvinist doctrine that dominated America in the
1700s. Calvinists like Jonathan Edwards
George Whitefield stressed mans sinful nature
and his utter incapacity to overcome that nature
without the direct action of the Holy Spirit to
impart Gods grace. Man had to wait until God
decided to act. Others began to focus on mans
capacity to act on his salvation-to turn away
from sinful behavior and to change his moral
actions. Whatever their particular doctrinal
stance, most preachers in the early 1800s
emphasized the duty and ability of sinners to
repent and to stop sinning.
Jonathan Edwards
George Whitfield
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The Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s
The core of those 1800s revivals was the
experience of conversion. It was not simply
coming to understand and to believe the Bible, it
was something that happened to them a real,
intensely emotional event they experienced as a
profound psychological transformation left them
with a fundamentally altered sense of identity.
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The Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s
Conversion consisted of a set sequence of steps,
each of which was accom-panied by a powerful
emotion that led the penitent from the terror of
eternal damnation through redemption to the
promise of salvation. 1. Conversion began in a
state of "concern" about the state of one's soul
and 2. "inquiry" into the doctrine of salvation
propelled by the question "what can I do to
be saved?" This led to a state of 3. sharp
spiritual "anxiety"--fear over the prospect of
eternal damnation, which in turn grew into an
unmistakable sense of 4. "conviction," the
heartfelt realization that one stood justly
condemned for his sins and deserved eternal
damnation and that no matter how much one might
desire it, there was absolutely nothing he could
do to earn salvation. But there was something
the penitent had to do fully repent and
surrender unconditionally to God's will to do
with him as he saw fit and to serve him fully.
5. This moment of surrender to Gods will was
the moment of conversion, the moment at which a
merciful God would bestow his grace upon the
repentant sinner.
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The Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s
Before the Revolutionary War, there was no
significant westward expansion. In 1775,
Daniel Boone blazed the Cumberland Trail, a
natural break in the ridges of the Appalachian
Mountains, and linked southwest Virginia with
Tennessee and Kentucky. About one quarter of
a million settlers followed him through this gap.
In 1783 the Treaty of Paris gave the newly
formed United States all lands west of the
Mississippi River. At wars end, American
interest in the West reached a new level of
intensity. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787
gave land grants as an impetus to settlement,
which is reflected in the rapid admission of new
states west of the Appalachians. Entering the
Union in short order were
Kentucky-1792 Tennessee-1796 Ohio-1803,
Louisiana-1812 Indiana-1816 Alabama-1817,
Illinois-1818 Mississippi-1819 Missouri-1821.
People were pouring into the West.
Daniel Boone
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The Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s
With such rapid expansion to vast new spaces,
churches faced three major tasks (1)
organization (2) reviving religious zeal, and
(3) following the people westward. People on
the frontier resisted efforts to convert them.
Strongly independent, they took religion into
own hands. These were people who "preferred
their whiskey straight, and their politics and
religion red hot." They were attracted to those
who preached a faith that was more emotional
than intellectual, more free-spirited than
ritualistic.
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The Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s
Peter Cartwright, a Methodist circuit rider,
illustrates the rugged nature of trying to
convert men in the frontier. Often, when he
would arrive in a new area, he would have to
prove himself physically before was accepted.
Since many local sinners did not wish to be
preached too, he often had to beat up those who
threatened him before he was free to share with
them the message of grace.
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The Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s
The 2nd Great Awakening was ignited by the
preach-ing of James McGready, a Presbyterian, in
the area of Logan County, Kentucky. The
preaching of McGready and others touched a nerve,
however, and at a Camp Meeting at Red River the
ground was "covered by the slain." "Their screams
for mercy pierced the heavens ...and the most
notorious profane swearers and Sabbath-breakers
were pricked to the heart."
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The Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s
This outbreak of revival ignited others at Gasper
River, and at Cane Ridge. The Cane Ridge Revival
became the most famous, and was led by Barton
Stone. This meeting was a vast gathering
(10-25,000). In order to appreciate how big this
gathering must have seemed, one need only note
that the largest town in the state--Lexington--num
bered 1,795 persons.
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The Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s
Because they were dealing with a moving, floating
population, the preachers at these Camp
Meetings had to press for an immediate decision.
This led them to emphasize and play to the
emotions compressing the cycle of guilt,
despair, hope, and assurance into a few days or
hours. The resulting conversion would occur in an
outburst of shouting, weeping, falling, running,
jumping, jerking, and barking.
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The Second Great Awakening 1800-1830s
These emotional aspects of the 2nd Awakening
disturbed Presbyterians, who argued that a God of
order would not countenance such confusion. A
split ensued that led Barton Stone to leave that
denomination to preach the simple New Testament
gospel about the Lords one, true church.
Barton W. Stone
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Restoring the teaching of the Lords Gospel,
and the characteristics of His church,
after centuries of abuse and alteration
33 A.D.
The Lords original teaching about
His church, the body of the saved
Distorted and corrupted through the
centuries by human weakness,
ignorance and rebellion
against Gods revealed will
The Lords original teaching about
His church, the body of the saved
Do not go beyond what is written. - 1 Cor 46
2007 A.D.