Turning your Bible this morning to Daniel chapter 5, and as you're turning there, I wanted to explain how we got our next biographical character. A couple of months ago, I asked Pastor Csikszentmihalyi to give me some input, and he chose the life of Asahel Middleton. In the last couple of weeks, as I was asking around the congregation for any input about the first and second great awakening, whether people had done any study of this subject, And it was obvious it might be helpful to do an introduction of what an awakening is, since we're going to be talking about the subject of revival. And I thought a good place in the Bible to start is Daniel chapter 5, though it is not a revival in a New Testament church, it is an example of an awakening. Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in the presence of the thousand. While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple, which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple of the house of God, which had been in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone. In the same hour, the fingers of a man's hand appeared and wrote opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace, and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king's countenance changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his hips were loosened and his knees knocked against each other. The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers. This is an interesting text because you might ask, what causes consternation and what causes fear in Belshazzar? Remember, he's having a party to his gods. He's calling upon his gods. So, how does he know that the handwriting upon the wall is not his gods answering him? He doesn't know yet what the handwriting on the wall is. Well, strictly he knows this because his conscience has been made awake by the Holy Spirit of God. God has smoked his heart with a legal fear, if I may use the words of William Perkins. John Gill has some helpful comments on this verse. It says, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, or the girdles of his loins, which were loosed or broke through the agitation he was in. or he was all over in a sweat, so that he was obliged to loose his girdle, or as persons of great fear and consternation, he was seized with a pain in his back. It opened as it were. In modern language, we say he became incontinent, as Grotius and others. It seems to be a prophecy fulfillment of Isaiah 45.1. and his knees smote against one another, is a case of persons in a great tremor or under a panic." Now, let's apply this to the Great Awakening or a revival of religion. We're doing a study online at challies.com of Jonathan Edwards' book, A Treatise on the Religious Affections. Edwards wrote, the scriptures teach us that if the views should be given to such a degree, what views is this? a foretaste of heaven in the Christian? Is there a given in heaven the weak frame of the body could not subsist under it? In other words, it would overwhelm it. Is it no man can in that manner see God and live? Is it not too bold a thing for us to set bounds to the sovereign God? or to say that in giving in earnest of this reward he shall never give so much of it, is in the least to diminish the strength of the body, which God has nowhere thus limited himself." What is he saying here? It's bold for us to set abound that God has not set himself. That is, God has not limited himself to how much joy, how much a foretaste of heaven a saint may have. The application I drew from that on the other side is, God has not limited Himself to how much fear, how much agitation the wicked may have when they contemplate the wrath of God. And this is what we see in a revival. In a true revival, not the revivals that we see in our day, but the revivals that we had in Nettleton's day. The subject of revival has fallen on hard times. There's so much out there right now that is called revival that is blasphemous, brethren. I think about what's going on from Todd Bentley down in Florida. I think of these revival meetings that they have. But if you really study these things out, and I recommend you don't do this right before you go to bed at night, because you will have insomnia, as my wife can testify. I had a great deal of it this week. Even though I've been studying this stuff for 24 years still, this stuff really affects you. But God has not limited himself to either how much joy that a Christian can have before he gets to heaven, or how much fear a person who is not a Christian, who is under his wrath, how much fear of hell that he would have either prior to being a Christian, Or maybe he hardens his heart and he goes back to the world. The only thing that we know from the scriptures is if God draws too near, it would be lethal to the body. We're talking about the creator of heaven and earth who spake and it was done, who commanded and it stood fast, who shaketh the heavens out of its place and causes the pillars of heaven to tremble. And we're just small little people. And just a little taste of God drawing near in a revival could be overwhelming. And it's in God's mercy that He withstays His hand. So let's look at a couple of quotes from the Great Awakening to see what this was like. In a letter written by Daniel Rowland to Thomas Prince of Boston, July 24, 1740, God was pleased to magnify his grace in visiting poor sinners. Their convictions were attended with great horror and trembling and loud weeping, which I suppose could not be stopped as easily as some do imagine. For I did observe that many did continue to cry in the most doleful manner along the road on their way home, and it was not in the power of man to prevail with them to refrain. For the word of the Lord remained like a fire in their hearts. It says, "...her convictions were attended with great horror and trembling and loud weeping. Multitudes were again on that night steeped in awful sorrow and stunned with the most poignant remorse for sin. I'm going to read it in this context. The evening of Wednesday, June 5th, was appointed for prayer, and long before the hour for commencing the service, the church was crowded. The awful sadness in every countenance bespoke the deep earnestness within. Even the most ungodly were overawed and wore a solemn sadness on their faces, had a pestilence swept over the neighborhood, leaving one dead in every house. Greater awe would not have been produced. At the close of the services, several efforts were made to dismiss the congregation, but without avail. And it was not until four o'clock in the morning that the people could be persuaded to go home. Multitudes were again on that night steeped in awful sorrow and stung with the most poignant remorse for sin. Such an utterable horror overwhelmed one young man that the blood streamed from mouth and nose. Another man, who all his life was a profligate, had such vivid views of the horrors of hell. And the pains of hell took such hold of him that he cried out like a demoniac." You're looking at a picture of, okay, this is Whitfield, of course. This is the opposite for a Christian. After I'd finished my last discourse, I was so overpowered with a sense of God's love that it almost took away my life. Now that's the spirit of adoption. What a wonderful thing that would be to experience. That's one of my spiritual fathers there. When I was very young and knew very little about these things, I read everything that he wrote. But he said in 1844, many of our young preachers when they go forth on their important errand are poorly qualified to direct the doubting conscience or to administer safe consolation to those that are troubled or awakened. Well, if that was true 164 years ago, do you think that we have a better handle on it now? And that's a very interesting question because in some areas of theology, we've gained so much light. Let's take the Dutch theologians. You had Abraham Kuyper and Bovinck and G. Hardis Vos. And I don't put those men down for a moment. I mean, I deeply love them. But as far as experimental theology, what he's saying is they don't write these books like they used to. That's 1844. So he's saying we have to go back to the older writers, and I think that he means Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, and so on. had gotten a grasp of these things was Asa Helmetleton, but who is he? I have my notes here, but I'm going to speak from memory. He was born in 1783 in North Killingsworth, Connecticut. He was raised in a professing Christian family, but didn't have any awakening, though he was exposed to the catechism. When he was 17 years old, they had a Thanksgiving Day banquet and he engaged in the revelry and like everybody else around. And that night he stood in a field and he was watching the sun go down. And something came over him about his condition isn't good. That something just isn't right with his whole manner of life. But he couldn't put his finger upon it. But it was the beginning of his awakening and it took 10 months. 10 months this man was under a spirit of bondage and fear. He would be what the Puritans would call your typical law work conversion. So now we got to look at two extremes. A lot of you have never had that type of an awakening experience and so on. And you suppose possibly I don't know what to make of 10 months under a spirit of bondage and fear. The other side would say, well, I suspect anybody's conversion that didn't go through a time of a slew of despond or a great time of awakening prior to Christian pilgrim entering into the wicked gate. We want to avoid both extremes. The reason I believe that God brought him through this dark valley was because He was going to make him useful as a preacher afterwards. And so he goes through this lengthy awakening and he's studying the Scriptures. He wants it to not be true because it's condemning him. Sometimes he becomes somewhat of an atheist calling the whole thing into question. At another time, he finds his heart so full of enmity against God and he knows that he's in a dangerous condition. And it takes him ten months before the eyes of his understanding are really enlightened to where he had a hope in his conversion. Now where his actual regeneration took place in this process, that's a secret work done by God only known by its results. But the thing that we can learn from that is during that protracted period of conviction through which he passed before his reconciliation to God, he obtained knowledge of the human heart which few possess. He could trace the secret windings of human depravity. He understood the refuges of lies to which sinners are prone to resort. And he learned how to meet and to answer the various excuses by which they attempted to shield themselves from blame. He had an experimental acquaintance with the great truths of the gospel, which enabled him not only to present them with clearness to the minds of others, but also to press them home upon their consciences as manners of everlasting moment. His deep religious experience enabled him to ascertain the precise state of mind of different individuals and to adapt his instruction to their particular circumstances. When an impression was made upon the mind, he was careful to follow it up, well knowing the various ways in which religious impressions are liable to be effaced and what is best adapted to deepen and perpetuate them. So this is the year 1800. In the year 1801, his father died, and so the obligation to prepare the family for the future and take care of them fell on his shoulders, and he's just 18 years old. And at the same time, God is calling him into the ministry. He comes across an evangelical magazine that talks about missions. And his real desire is to go into the mission field, but he has to do some preparatory studies while he's working on the farm. And eventually, he is able to make an impression on Timothy Dwight to receive him into Yale Seminary. Now Dwight is an interesting individual. In fact, this whole time of American history is very interesting because remember he started teaching in 1795 at Yale. He just had the American Revolution. Now during the American Revolution, we had an ally and that was the French troops. But with the French soldiers coming in and helping us came atheism, the works of Thomas Paine, the works of Voltaire. Ironically, Britain was spared from this because of the evangelical awakening, which I made a hint of when I was talking about the life of John Newton. So the seminaries were in a really sad state in 1795. Out of 110 people in his first class, one in 11 is even a professing Christian. When Edelton begins his schooling, he's the only professing Christian in the freshman class. But to give you a little bit of what his, Dwight's character was, he was the third daughter, I mean his mother was the third daughter of Jonathan Edwards, and she believed that there was no age too young to prepare a son for the future intellectually. So you had this young man who is six years of age, decides he's going to grammar school, he wants to learn Latin. His dad is a farmer or whatever and doesn't see the purpose of it, but the young man's going to grammar school and decides, well, while the older boys are away, I'm going to borrow their Latin grammar. So at the age of seven, this guy has mastered the Latin grammar twice. By the age of eight, he's so intellectually progressed that they said that he would already be ready for college except that he was providentially hindered. So Timothy Dwight becomes the president of Yale Seminary, and you've got all of these infidels there, and he knows what's going on, and he issues a challenge. Would they like to really discuss these things? It was not uncommon for seniors in Yale Seminary in those days to have a time of discussion with the president, the teacher of theology, whoever it might be, At Yale, the teachers weren't answering questions about infidelity. They were purposely avoiding questions on the validity of the Bible until Dwight got there. And you have this man that's blessed with this great intellectual acumen, and he decides he's going to match swords with them. And it took a while, but these guys are completely thwarted and turned inside out. And this single man had turned Yale Seminary in a different direction. Well, Nettleton gets there in 1807, 1808, and a revival came not long after Nettleton came to college. Nettleton wasn't known so much for his intellectual acumen. He's still somewhat under awakening. He's a Christian, but he's still having doubts, so the things that matter to him are the theological sciences, not your strict things that they were studying at that time. But a revival breaks out, and it was interesting that one person came under real conviction of sin. This guy is so frightened that he's lying on what was deemed his deathbed. They thought if he doesn't get better, it's going to take his life. And Nettleton's roommate, who wasn't even a professing Christian at the time, called for the president, Timothy Dwight, to come. So Dwight comes in the middle of the night. And he begins to counsel this young man under awakening. And Nettleden comes by his side and he pours out his prayers to God for the salvation of this young man. There is an atheist also in the school who mocked Christianity and somebody knowing the agitation of mind that this young man is under said, could you please come and witness this? And so this man comes in and he sees this person under such great fear and agony that this person becomes convicted and he becomes a Christian and he ends up going into the mission field. This young man who is under awakening, he gets converted and he becomes a pastor. So it was a very interesting time at Yale for him. But in his junior year, he still has this goal to go into the mission field. And do you remember how I had taught you on Judson? This is about the time that our country was sending the first missionaries out to India and one of them was Adoniram Judson and the other was a man named Samuel Mills who really had a desire to go into the mission field. And providentially Samuel Mills heard about Asahel Nettleton and his desire to go into the mission field so he came to Yale in Asahel's junior year and they struck up a real friendship because they really have a goal to bring the gospel to other countries, but providentially neither of them end up on the ship that went with the other men to India. Samuel Mills went for a time to Africa and then returned, but the problem with Nettleton was he was always one of poor health and also he had accumulated some debt. which he could not in clear conscience keep going forward with his studies. And so Timothy Dwight asked him to stay on at Yale and become a butler for him, and he continued his studies. But at the same time, he was given an opportunity to preach, and it's really obvious that God has given this young man a gift. Now, how was Nettleton as a preacher? He wasn't as eloquent as George Whitefield. You know, they said of Whitefield, David Garrick used to say that Whitefield could reduce an audience to tears by merely the way he uttered the word Mesopotamia. Well, Nettleton never had those kind of gifts of eloquence. eloquence. But what he had was such a seriousness of mind and such doctrinal accuracy, and he just expounded the truth and had great results. And what was interesting, during the years from 1812 when he first started preaching to 1822, providentially, and this would be an amazing thing to happen to a pastor, revival just followed him wherever he went. Now, Nettleton at this time was an evangelist. He wasn't a pastor settled down in a ministry. And the reason for that is, until 1822, he never relinquished his desire to go into the mission field. He always believed that there would be an opportunity to go into the mission field and to serve God there. So he would spend no more than three to four months at any church at a time, and the place he focused in on first were those parts of Connecticut that they called waste places. They got the term because during the Great Awakening, and I know Mark Raines may have mentioned this when he taught on Whitefield, there was a fanatical young man named James Davenport in the 1740s who was going from church to church and just wreaking havoc. because of his fanaticism, because he would have this idea that if I could merely listen to your testimony, I could discern, God would give me a spirit of discernment whether or not you were a Christian. He would rely a lot upon impulses and so on. And so as Nettleton would go into these places, he would hear these stories and it was forming him, it was fashioning him for the kind of pastor that he needed to be to these people who were under awakening. In conversing with awakened sinners, as revivals would break out, he exhibited great wisdom. There was no part of the ministerial work in which he excelled more than in this. For this, he was preeminently fitted, as has been already intimated by his own religious experience. He was generally able, with but little difficulty, to ascertain the exact state of the sinner's mind, and he knew what instruction was suited to his case. He had a reputation, Nettleton did, He so intuitively knew how to counsel a person, what kind of counsel to give them, that some people wondered, man, this guy seems to be able to read my heart, but he was just so versed in experimental theology. Okay, so I've talked about the term experimental theology. What do I mean by that? That's the study of Christian experience. And for you young people, I want you to think of it this way. Suppose that you have a dinosaur and he leaves an imprint of his foot. in the dirt. And you have an interest in those things and so you come and you want to study the footprint. But then some sand gets kicked up onto it or whatever and you don't have the imprint exactly as it was left. Well, think of the dinosaur footprint as the word of God coming upon the Christian heart. And think of the imprint as Christian experience. But you've got two problems. You've got a very subtle devil who's able to throw sand on it and make a mess of it, but you have our own deceitful heart. And he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool. And so you don't have an exact imprint, but it's a very interesting science studying Christian experience. But it's just fallen on hard times. You might say, well, how do you know that? Because I've been on the Reformed Baptist discussion list for over 10 years. And these are just things that people don't want to study in any kind of detail. What happened during the Second Great Awakening? How do you counsel an awakened sinner? What were the methods of Jonathan Edwards? And I don't want to speak disparagingly, but if the discussion is Sam Waldron's new book, Answering John MacArthur, there's a great deal of interest in eschatology. If they want to know how to answer the Pato Baptist, there's a great deal of interest in covenant theology. But there's no longer the desire to study Christian experience like there used to be. So you're looking at me and you say, well, who gives you the right? You haven't earned it to be able to make a charge like that. And brethren, I know that. I'm a mailman in Kentwood, Michigan. To refresh you a little bit about my own biographical experience, back in May of 1983, I was awakened myself and for the next three and a half years, I was under a lot of fear. Whether I was a Christian or not during that time, I wanted to read everything that I could on this subject. That's why most of this stuff from the revivals, John Gilley's historical collections and accounts of revivals, Hayman Humphrey's sketches of revivals, Archibald Alexander's thoughts on religious experience, the works of Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, John Flavel, these really became of interest to me because I was so afraid of building my house on the sand. So for years, I just poured over these things. I was single, I had an advantage, and you would find a lot of people that would be interested in these things, but a lot of people wanted to skirt this type of discussion. Soteriology, regeneration, the antecedents to regeneration, what happens in conviction of sin, what is servile fear as opposed to evangelical fear, You know, what does it mean the common influences of the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit coming upon a person and his common influences, but not regenerating him and so on. All of that stuff was of great interest to me. What is a temporary believer? And so I studied these things with a great desire for the sake of my own soul. So that's why I've always had an interest in these things. But we'll get back to our sketch. I want to talk to you a little bit again about what goes on during a revival. And this is Heman Humphrey's sketches or manual of revivals, and there's a brand new copy in the library. This is my antique copy. I somehow misplaced my new one. Okay, so you've got this person. He's under awakening, and he's trusting. He's saying, it's not my fault because of my inability. I can't come to Christ. And so he says, our spiritual guides and teachers, the men who were preaching at that time, never said to us when under awakening, don't be discouraged, wait God's time and He will deliver you. No, no. But how long will you hold out in your rebellion against God? They never asked us while in the state, don't you feel better? But why don't you submit to God and cast yourself upon His mercy, embracing the Lord Jesus Christ by faith? who came down from heaven on purpose to save the lost. Turn ye, turn ye, why will you die? Well, another thing that happens during a revival, as you might expect, that you don't hear a lot in our day is, what happens to an unconverted person, excuse me, a professing Christian who has a false profession? In our day, it is curious to me that the false profession is never exposed. I'm not talking about the laughing revival because that's so over the top. I'm talking about modern revivals and they say the Spirit of God has come down, but all the professing Christians remain professing Christians. None of them find out that they were building their house on the sand. But let me read here from Heman Humphrey. It's very interesting stuff, though it's somewhat disconcerting. It has been a remarkable season for the destruction of false hopes. Nearly 20 of those who have lately appeared to build on the rock have been plucked off from a sandy foundation. One had supposed that she loved the God of Providence because she had some sense of his daily kindness to her and her family, but was brought to see that she hated the real character of God with all her heart. Another, accustomed to contemplate moral truth in the light of a clear and penetrating intellect, had mistaken the ascent of the understanding for the affections of the heart. That's pretty humbling. But there's an immediate application to that. Any of you that have been Reformed Baptists for a number of years know that there are some that have gone out from us. Well, there's a couple of reasons why they go out from us. They may want to sit under a different ministry. And that's fine, brethren. We don't claim to have a corner on the truth. And we wish them Godspeed and give them our blessings. But you ever notice that some people that leave our midst are so vitriolic against us? They just seem to carry a grudge? Well, this may explain the reason why. It may not be us. If we're being faithful to the truth, if we're preaching the truth, their enmity may be still against God. We may be talking about people that have never been converted. And we have to face that as a reality. Not every profession is real. in a true revival you would expect that some people who have believed all along that they're converted will come to the conclusion that they're not converted. Yes. OK. I never even thought of that before, especially in light of modern revivals such as we had. I think of the one we had at Fifth Third Park 10 or 12 years ago, where thousands come and say they were converted. Yet years later they did a study and they can't find any of these people plugged in anywhere. Yet you never hear of people who go to a revival and start to question, at least I haven't heard of those types of things, and start to question whether they were actually ever saved. That's such a good point. What's interesting about starting out with Daniel 5 and the awakening that Belshazzar had, brethren, you couldn't explain that naturally. that had to come from God. So revival is not something that's got up from men. Now when the Holy Spirit comes upon a congregation in a real revival, there's going to be this Judgment Day honesty. And the Holy Spirit may smite the heart of the hypocrite with illegal fear, and he may realize, wow, I've been baptized, I'm a member of this church and so on, but I must honestly say that now the things that you're preaching, I don't like them. I find a hostility in my heart against them. And that's very common in revival. And the reason I say that is because we're going to make a transition to the life of Charles Finney. And the carefulness that you see in Nettleton, I'm just going to give you an example of his caution. If you have this revival going on, he avoided so diligently any kind of emotionalism, Like say you have somebody in the congregation who's greatly under fear, they would take that person and they would bring him to a separate room to help them. But there's something in revival called sympathy. And they used to use this term, they don't use it anymore. If you see me yawn, it may cause you to yawn. In a revival, you've got a group full of people and the emotions are at a very fevered pitch. If you see somebody and they're crying out in agony and they're under great conviction, you may be moved merely by sympathy and not by the Holy Spirit. So Nettleton really tried to curb that. What's interesting about Finney is he gave such vent to this. I remember under the Great Awakening, I found it interesting that when they counseled people who were under awakening, Jonathan Edwards thought it was important, whether you agree with it or not, because he knew the animal spirits, as they called them in those days. He knew our tendencies towards emotions and so on. The women and the men were never counseled in the same room. They were separated. And he felt that there was a need for that. They were so cautious to make sure that people weren't diverted in their attention from the one thing needful. And I find this as I go through Nettleton's counsels and so on, how careful they were that these people wouldn't lose their impressions. Another thing that I found really interesting is I had mentioned that somebody wrote an article to the New York Observer about his agitations and his need to receive counsel from Nettleton. So Nettleton comes into the room, it seems like he's avoiding this man, he's going on about an hour, and the guy, he's pacing back and forth, he's under such agitation. Finally, Nettleton walks in and this guy takes him and throws his arms around his neck. It says, I am in complete agony. If you don't say something to comfort me, I'm just going to, I'll die. And Edelton broke down crying and he says, you're trusting in man. I cannot help you. And he points him to Christ, but this is what was interesting. He says, your case is extremely dangerous. But you say, why would he give them counseling? I mean, the guy is under conviction. That's what we're looking for and so on. And this is something you don't think about very much. And the first person that pointed this out to me was A.H. Strong in his work on systematic theology. Did you know, think about this, the Holy Spirit is convicting you and you're under a great deal of agitation. Did you know that the moment before you're regenerate, you're actually more guilty than ever because against more light than you've ever had, you're still withholding your heart against God? And so you're getting more light, but one moment you're at enmity against God, then you're quick, and that's regeneration. God reverses the lever of your affections, and then you begin to love Him. But one moment before that regeneration, you're sinning against more light, then because the light of this revival has come, the Holy Spirit is there. This man's under conviction, but he hasn't given his heart to Christ. And they never said, that's not your fault, you have moral inability. It's your fault because your inability is moral. You won't come to Christ because you don't want Him to rule over you. And they pressed that to these men's consciences. In fact, Nettleton worked on bringing the person under more conviction as long as it was the light of the Word that was bringing the conviction and not some imaginary fear or so on. So, let's contrast Charles Finney. And I have to admit that I don't know a lot about Finney, but before I begin, I want to know if anybody has any questions about what I've discussed so far. Go ahead, Kent. You mentioned briefly two types of fear, but you didn't explain them. Okay, there's a servile fear. That's just fear of going to hell. Okay. And that's consistent with anybody who's standing before God in judgment. He is greatly afraid, of course. But an evangelical fear is just your proper fear of a servant to your Father. That's consistent with love. But perfect love casts out the servile fear. It doesn't cast out the reverential fear of God. Go ahead, Kyle. Well, this is in my mind and you don't have to accept my judgments on this. These are things that I have had to form in my own. convictions, but Suppose we want to talk about say a book on answering John MacArthur on premillennial eschatology You know, when is Jesus Christ going to return? Is there going to be a future restoration of the Jews in Romans 11 26? You can discuss that with unregenerate people who have a great deal of Outward knowledge about it and there's not going to be any agitation but if you start to talk about the temporary believer or the common influences of the Holy Spirit upon a person or this type of fear that these people had in revival, that's not really very comfortable. I mean, that's why I lose insomnia. Not everything in this study is really comfortable to focus upon, because we're dealing with men's souls and so on. And a lot of people don't like that kind of close application, because then you're really dealing with the heart. You're really dealing with the matters of life and death and so on. You can be wrong about eschatology and you can go to heaven, but if you're building your house on the sand, you've had it, if you remain in that condition. So I'll talk about Finney for just a minute. He was born in 1792, though coming from a Calvinistic background, Finney rejected tenets of old divinity. I think I got a picture up here. I know my children are looking at this and wondering if that's a Christmas carol. That's a picture of Finney, two pictures of Finney. But Finney wrote this book on lectures on revival, and I picked out three things that I found were really interesting. One, a revival of religion is not a miracle. There is nothing in religion beyond the ordinary powers of nature. Number two, mistaken notions concerning the sovereignty of God have greatly hindered revivals. Number three, your duty is in promoting a revival. That's your duty. You need to promote a revival. And everything that you know about revivals, say, in fundamental Baptist circles, it just seemed like it came right from here because this is just a little outline of some of the things that they were doing. And see if this sounds familiar. Number one, announcing a revival for four days that will start on a certain date. Number two, a certain preacher who has made a name for himself in previous revivals will be present. Number three, handbills or advertisements will be distributed and every other means to secure a full attendance. Number four, during the meetings there is no attempted There is no attempt to affect the heart by an intelligent and impressive exposition of gospel truth, but rather their sermons, their hymns, their songs are all adapted to work upon the feelings of the nervous and sanguine hearers until animal excitability is brought into full play." Number five, men of great standing and distinction that have recently been converted. You ever heard of this? They bring this person and they march him up here because he's an excellent example of somebody that's been recently converted. And how many of these people do we know that had a testimony that they were converted, and so you bring them up forward as the evidence of what the grace of God can do, like Bob Dylan. Even Alice Cooper has a profession of being a Christian. And back then, they thought that that would help. So, six, those who are anxious and wish the prayers of the church are invited to come forward to an anxious seat. In our day, they would give an altar call. Now, Nettleton used what was called the inquiry room, the anxious room, where if somebody needed some further instruction, He had a great ability to go from person to person and probably wouldn't spend more than five minutes per person or whatever because he frankly admitted, I cannot convert you, but I can remove obstacles out of your way that you are harboring that may make you despair of ever being converted. For example, while I'm not one of the elect or I've committed the unpardonable sin. But Finney had what was called the anxious seat and the inquiring person, the awakened person, was put on the seat and you'd have a number of people maybe stand around him and pray for him and they pressed him for a decision and they did it with great vehemence. They would make it sound like if you didn't make this decision today, tomorrow you may be a reprobate. And these things were being severely condemned by the theologians of Princeton. I found a great deal of help from reading through the Princeton Review in the last couple of weeks because in the 1830s when Finney was really starting to be popular, It was causing a great consternation in those who knew that if you continued to practice these new measures, as they were called, you're going to wreak a great deal of havoc in the church. Number seven, appropriate hymns are chosen to be sung to assist in the excitement. So you choose hymns for their emotional effect, not for their truth. Number eight, the mind is too agitated to receive serious instruction and often such instruction is not given. Well, that's exactly what the person needs is instruction. In the book, Thoughts on the Present Revival of Religion, Jonathan Edwards was blamed for causing people to be more under fear by his instruction. And he says, if I've spoken to them something other than the truth, I very much to be condemned for that. But if I'm only representing their cases as bad as it is and holding forth more light, because whatever agitations they have about their present condition, their condition outside of Christ is way worse than they have represented it. And so He would hold forth more light, not to drive them out of their wits, brethren, but to drive them to Christ. break off every self-refuge, every bit of self-righteousness so that they would see, if God does not mercifully interpose, I'm going to perish. If I don't embrace Christ, if I don't lay hold of Him, but sometimes people are self-righteous and they need to be stripped of this tendency to trust in their own righteousness. And they don't see that at first. And I thought it was interesting the charges that came to Edwards and others on this particular matter. I haven't talked a lot about Nettleton as a preacher, except I wanted to focus on the difference between him and Finney. And one thing I thought that was interesting was just his seriousness in the pulpit. And he's preaching on the rich man and Lazarus at this sermon. He didn't have the eloquence of Whitefield, but he had the seriousness. And there was something about his delivery that just attracted people to come and listen to him. So he's preaching on the rich man and Lazarus, and he's getting toward the end of his exposition. And he looks towards the back of the church, and he says, here comes Dives. Dives was the name they gave to the rich man. And he's walking down here right now. And he did it with such ability that the people instinctively turned around to see Dives. So he represents him as coming forward to the pulpit. And all of a sudden the rich man is in the pulpit and you can see that he's a firebrand of hell. And Nettleton just starts pleading with these people, take this seriously, here's someone from the very place that I'm trying to get you to not go to. And I guess it had a very affecting result, that kind of preaching. There were people, though he didn't have the ability of some of the great pulpiteers that said they could remember 20 to 30 years afterward just the way that he reasoned with people. He had the ability to reason you out of your false conclusions and your you know, indecision. And they said that sometimes it was so overwhelming, his reasoning with the conscience, that people would almost laugh at themselves because they were trusting to these things. And so he had the ability that way. But I think that what really made it effectual was the preaching of the truth. And I was studying the Revival under Finney, and I can't say that God didn't use him. I haven't studied this out in detail, so I want to be fair, but his theology was completely a product of his own mind. And Charles Hodge brings this out, the great theologian from Princeton, he was extremely logical. If he granted his premise, he had to grant his end, but it was all a product of his own reason. And the doctrines of God's sovereignty and man's inability were abhorrent to them. And he didn't just write against them. When he preached against them, he was very virulent. And he would say things like, the opposition must be broken down. And there was just an unruly passion in him that kind of reminds you of what you would read in Davenport. And the Princeton theologians had very little patience with this guy teaching theology at Oberlin. But I have to assume, though I haven't studied the results of his revivals and so on, that people with that kind of reckless theology can't be doing good to those who hear him. Anyway, is there any questions before I close here? I thank you for your attention. If I seem like I'm overly serious, that's because I don't do this a lot and it's more my nervousness, not that I'm trying to be overdramatic. That just comes because I only am up here every couple of months, but I hope I was still able to convey some things that are interesting to you. Let's pray. Father, I am completely aware of my unfitness as a vessel to teach on the things that we have looked at and studied this morning, but I still feel that they are important. And I think that some of these old books need to be brushed off, the dust brushed off and opened up and people have a desire for experimental theology and the history of revivals and the way that you used these men and why you used them. And Father, we know as we study these things that even praying for revival is a dangerous thing because you will turn this church upside down. And yet, we don't want to be afraid of it. If you want to visit us in your felt presence in a great measure, that's exactly what we desire above all things. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.