We often speak longingly of spiritual revival, but lack an understanding of why past revivals happened. One reason why America’s Awakenings were “Great” was that its leaders understood the nature of revival: the process of conversion, the marks of true revival, how to preach and counsel during a revival, and how to tell when a revival is going awry. In this Southwesterners’ Forum, we Dr. Robert Caldwell (professor of church history) examine this wisdom, handed down from the leaders of the First and Second Great Awakenings. We’ll seek to recapture their outlook, in hope of new revivals in our generation.
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Robert Caldwell 0:00
It’s good to be here. My name is Dr Robert Caldwell. I teach church history here at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where I’ve been here for 20, years. I started in 2004 and in that first year of classes, I had Mr. Boss here in one of my classes, a class on Jonathan Edwards, I believe. So, we’re going to take the hour and talk about something that’s very close to our hearts, and that’ll be the Great Awakenings revivals, and that’s what we’ll be talking about. But Rob, why don’t you introduce yourself?
Robert Boss 0:44
My name is Rob boss. And as Dr Caldwell said, when I came back to Southwestern for PhD work, his was, I believe, the first class that I took that first semester, and I took him every opportunity that I could. And just a plug, he’s an awesome professor, and I recommend everybody take Dr Caldwell for church history or anything else he offers. But you can pay me later. But yeah, I taught at Southwestern in the college and some at the masters level for about five years, church history and in the humanities, the history of ideas. The big thing that I’m working on now is a six-volume New Testament commentary based upon the writings of Jonathan Edwards, the ones that are housed or edited by Yale University. It’s a 73-volume set, and I am breaking it down into a line-by-line commentary on the New Testament. We’re about halfway through right now, about 840,000 words and over 4500 footnotes so far. But it’s being published by Reformation Heritage Books, so it should be in the publication pipeline shortly.
Robert Caldwell 2:12
So you graduated here, PhD, in 2013.
Robert Boss 2:19
Defended in 2013 and Dr Caldwell was my dissertation supervisor. I think I was your first!
Robert Caldwell 2:27
One of the first that I got. So we’re both interested in Jonathan Edwards: his theology, his writings, his sermons. We spend a lot of time thinking about him, teaching on him, and wading through his writings. Edwards is many things, and one of the major things he was is a theologian of revival. It’s something you don’t really have, “theologians of revival,”much anymore. You have practitioners of revival, but you don’t really have theologians thinking about, how does the gospel go forth through a community in a powerful way, in a way that is a little more than just the normal rhythm of ministry, which is always great and appropriate. But there are times where God showers His grace upon a community, a church, a congregation. And so and there was a lot of thought given to this phenomena two and a half centuries ago, in the first Great Awakening and even in the Second Great Awakening. And and so we’ll take some time and think through this issues. What makes a revival Great? Did you have any thing to add?
Robert Boss 3:52
I mean, we’ve spent the last few days kind of going back and forth over Zoom and coffee, talking about revival. Revival is something that’s very close to my heart, because I was converted (or came back, I would say, from the far country where the pigs and swine are), when I was 22 years old, it I had a phenomenally “great” awakening in my life, where just light invaded and I was transformed. And so from that point on, revival and awakening and true Christianity [has] just been very close to my heart. So, when I think of revival,when I read Edwards or other theologians of revival, it’s a very personal matter for me. I so I don’t approach it purely as an academic, but very much as a in an experiential way. A someone who has a PhD in church history and has spent a lot of time thinking academically about something, yet infusing the personal experience into it.
Robert Caldwell 5:11
We might take some time and talk about, where are the revivals today? That’s something I would like to talk about a little bit later down the pike. But I’d like to first just start by looking a little bit at some narratives of revival. And I’ll just take about two minutes and read through a section of Jonathan Edwards, talking about a revival at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts, in the mid 1730s:
Robert Caldwell 5:50
“There was scarcely a single person in the town, old or young, left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world. Those who were wont to be the vainest and loosest and those who had been disposed to think and speak lightly of vital and experimental religion were now greatly subject to Great Awakenings. And the work of conversion was carried on in a most astonishing manner, and increased more and more. Souls did, as it were, flock to Jesus Christ. From day to day for many months altogether, might be seen evident instances of sinners brought out of darkness into marvelous light and delivered out of a horrible pit and from the miry clay and set upon a rock with a new song of praise to God in their mouths. This work of God as it was carried on, and the number of true saints multiplied soon made a glorious alteration in the town, so that in the spring and summer following (1735), the town seemed to be full of the presence of God. It never was so full of love nor of joy, and yet so full of distress, as there were remarkable tokens of God’s presence in almost every house. It was a time of joy and families on account of salvation being brought into them, parents rejoicing over their children as newborn, husbands over their wives. Wives over their husbands. The goings of God were then seen in the sanctuary. God’s day was a delight. Our public assemblies were then beautiful. The congregation was alive in God’s service, everyone earnestly intent on the minister […] on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink the words of the minister as they came from his mouth. In all companies on other days, on whatever occasions persons met together, Christ was to be heard of and seen in the midst of them, our young people, when they met, they were apt to spend the time in talking of the excellency and dying love of Jesus Christ, the glory of the way of salvation, the wonderful, free, and sovereign grace of God, his glorious work in the conversion of the soul.”
Robert Caldwell 8:15
So just a remarkable picture of a revival that took place in a time for about six months, a remarkable period of awakening. And these things happen in churches across across the generations, and they and sometimes they still happen today. Do you have any stories?
Robert Boss 8:36
Well, first I wanted to ask you. Have you? I know that you are a scholar in this area. Have you heard of something or seen something that is matches the scale of what you just read today?
Robert Caldwell 8:50
In my lifetime, I’ve not come across something that matches this, that type of scale, and for various reasons. I mean, there are stories of great revivals that have happened, but I’ve not come across in my personal experience.
Robert Boss 9:08
I have a story. Now, this was before my wife and I came to Southwestern to do our master’s degrees. This was back in the early 90s. […] We were at a small church in eastern Oklahoma. […] I was getting my first opportunities to preach on a regular basis, and also did a lot of supply preaching in the association. And so, yeah, I was getting some good pulpit time, and I was getting more and more excited about revival, and I came across this book. There was a book by Michael Crawford published by Oxford University Press. And the title was Seasons of Grace. It just it made an imprint on me. And I it was the first book where I caught a vision of these revivals, like what you’re talking about. And it was the first book where I encountered the name Jonathan Edwards. And I thought, you know, this guy is speaking very highly of Edwards, and I was familiar with Wesley and parts of the transatlantic revival. But I was just enamored by it.
Robert Boss 11:06
And so I’m getting to preach some. And our little church had seasonal revivals. We had the fall revival, we had the spring revival. It was a seasonal, it was on the church calendar. And we would schedule an evangelist to come for a week or four days or whatever, and preach revival services during the evenings. And so our church was accustomed to thinking and talking about revivals in this kind of once or twice a year routine. And these revivals were always preceded by two cottage prayer meetings, to try to prime. The evangelists would usually request, have a couple of prayer meetings before I come, so that your hearts will be prepared for the messages. So they would usually have a couple of these little meetings. And I saw those meetings, and I sensed a sweet spirit in those meetings. So I was talking to my wife, and I said, You know what, we need to do this more, and not just do one in the fall and one in the spring. And so I asked the pastor, I got permission to start organizing cottage prayer meetings, house prayer meetings. So it started out, and it was not too difficult to find hosts. And so we had a group of four or five people meet in the house, and it was kind of a potluck situation, we bring meals, and we did this every two weeks for year and and the goal, the agenda, was to not pray for Aunt So-and-So and her hip replacement, but was to pray for God’s blessing and for revival in the church and in the land. And so it took some doing to get people in that mindset, but I would open up the meeting, the prayer meeting, with reading a devotional. And at this point I had a limited library, but I was grabbing anything hot that I could. So I’m reading from Wesley’s journal. And I’m just like, you know, and if you wanted to read any exciting, sensational stuff, just start reading his journal. I would find selections from Jonathan Edwards, or I’d read from Augustine’s Confessions, just anything to prompt the people to pray and to expect and to believe and to stir their hearts. In less than a year’s time, that four-person meeting grew to meetings of 30 people every two weeks. And it was just going from house to house, and the little church–one of these little traditional old churches in a little town; they had the the attendance plaque up front, where it shows the giving and the Sunday school attendance. Sunday School attendance went from 74 to 139. The money started flowing in. They built a brand new sanctuary, expanded on the church. It was just a season. It was the closest I’ve seen to a season of revival. And it wasn’t just the money. It was a sweet, sweet spirit. And there was just baptisms and people being saved and just a time of rejoicing and worship and growth. It was a transformation in that community.
Robert Caldwell 14:47
One of the big questions that Edwards and a lot of First Great Awakening ministers had was, how do we know if this is God’s work? Is this just a bunch of people getting together and having a good time? […] Is it more? How do we know it’s really God at work? And then there was a second question. Sometimes revivals would derail and degenerate into some unhelpful experiences, and it caused them to think about, how do we discern the marks of true revival versus when a revival is going off the rails, when it’s degenerating, devolving? And so you had lots of folks beginning to write on this subject, and Edwards wrote and developed a sermon on this subject, and then later published it as a treatise called The Distinguishing Marks of the Work of the Spirit of God.So he’s trying to find things that uniquely the Spirit of God does in an individual, in a community, in a church when revival is taking place. And he came across just five issues, which we could briefly go through. One, is Jesus esteemed in the revival? When I read the revival narrative earlier, everyone was talking about the excellency of Christ, his great grace in their lives. Christ was on the forefront of their minds their hearts. Is Christ esteemed? Is secondly, is Satan’s kingdom “fought back,” countered? And how does that look? It looks [like] when people hate sin for what it is. The preaching of sin, the preaching of repentance, and people really come to grapple with this: I hate my sin. I want it out of my life. Thirdly, the scriptures are exalted. The authority of the scriptures, they are revered as God’s Word. It’s not just a religious text that can help our lives. And then there was a spirit of truth, a spirit of love, just pervading the community, a sweet spirit, as you were talking about, and as Edwards talked about. And those five points I just mentioned are put out there to say,any revival you’re a part of, you might see, or read about, or hear about and see in the news, is Jesus exalted? Is sin, hated, preached against? Is there repentance? Are the scriptures exalted? Is a spirit of truth and a spirit of love out there? So those were prominent kind of guidelines to help them discern or determine the legitimacy of revival.
Robert Caldwell 14:47
He also had some brought “insufficient” signs. Because these revivals that Edwards was a part of […] there were some unusual happenings. And so he said that you can’t deem it a true work of God just because there’s extraordinary or unusual things going on, like bodily effects or people crying out, or groans, or bodily effects […] That’s no real evidence that this is something.
Robert Caldwell 18:52
And the “falling out” would be, sometimes the preacher would come (Edwards, or someone else, Whitfield), they preach the gospel powerfully (the wrath of God, the wrath of God upon sinners), and the Lord would just open someone’s heart and bring them under such conviction that they were overwhelmed, and they might fall over or something. And that happened in the First Great Awakening, as well as in the Second. […] Butt those things aren’t necessarily a sign of true revival. They might accompany it, but they’re not a true sign.
Robert Boss 19:41
One of the things that he says is also a “non-determining sign” is if people talk a lot about religion. I was thinking of Pilgrim’s Progress and the character, Talkative. Somebody that’s just all words. […]
Robert Boss 24:36
[It sometimes] seemed as though it was striving for the effect, trying to make everybody laugh, fall down, do all kinds of crazy stuff. Pass the bucket until they achieved a certain amount for donations. It was a high-pressure event. […] I’m just objectively saying what I witness. I’m not really trying to hurt anybody or anything like that. But […] there was all of these manifestations, but there was no message of repentance from sin. There was no focus on the glory and the excellency of Christ, or the work of Christ. It was always, “receive the blessing, drink deeply of the Holy Spirit.” And it was just missing some things. So I would say that that was evidently a little off the rails.
Robert Caldwell 26:05
Yeah, you’re losing sight of the main thing, the proclamation of the gospel, the repentance and faith, and a powerful preaching of holiness, calling people to a serious and devout call to the holy life.
Robert Caldwell 26:23
So […] maybe we can talk about some practicalities regarding revival. What to do, what do we do? […] Is it good to plan a revival? Is that good or bad? That old rhythm that you talked about in your churches, we’d have a fall and we’d have a spring revival. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Could you talk about the waymany ministers in the 18th and 19th century talked about what’s called “the means of grace.” What are the means of grace? They’re preaching, preaching, calling people. They’re reading the scriptures. Praying is a means of grace. Seeking the Lord is a means of grace. Repentance is a means of grace. These things are activities that people do. […] They don’t automatically work, right? It’s not magic. But usually salvation will not take place, growth or renewal in a church will not take place, if these things are not done.
Robert Boss 27:59
I’ve heard it explained like, by using these means, you put yourself in the arena where God does His work.
Robert Caldwell 28:08
It’s an occasion you’re creating. The occasion for him to do work. And he may “show up.” Or he may not..
Robert Boss 28:28
I’m just gonna put you on the spot a little bit. What do you think about the altar call?
Robert Caldwell 28:42
This is where you’re calling people forward to receive counsel, to hopefully shepherd them to a place where they can make a decision to receive Christ. Historically, where did the altar call come from? […] You find it in in revivals in America, around the 1780s-1790s. It’s developed by Methodists and Baptists. But,what are they developing? Something that you saw in the First Great Awakening when they’re calling people to faith and repentance. What does that look like now? Let’s give them an arena, a place, a way, that faith and repentance could look. So the altar call [provides] an activity. You could gain some counsel with a minister during the during or shortly after an evangelistic sermon. Perhaps get some spiritual counsel, and which may or may not eventuate in faith and repentance. […] It’s a means of grace. It can be used for the good, but it can be manipulated, manipulative. It can be used in a in a mechanical way, which is, is not good.
Robert Boss 30:20
Yeah, we are embodied. We are embodied in our body. So it is only natural to for our bodies to move forward, responding to, coming to Christ, to pray, be it counseedl. So there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. It can be a wonderful thing. I remember this pastor of this church that where we did the cottage prayer meetings and had the season of grace or a season of revival. He was not a theologian at all, but he said something really profound one time, […] He explained to me that when he extends invitation, that the Holy Spirit, that God had already changed tha person’s “wanter,” their will.
Robert Boss 31:24
So this man had a high school education, but he had he was fervent, and he was a great preacher. But this was his theological understanding of what was going on when he was extending the invitation. He recognized that God was attending the Word and saving souls and they were coming forth. It was just a pretty neat thing. It stuck with me.
Robert Boss 31:52
But yeah, a lot of times there are still altar calls in churches, but they’re kind of vague. You don’t know what’s going on. It’s like, come up here if the Lord’s leading you to do whatever you got to do in your life, and somebody will be here to pray with you. That just seems very unclear. I think one of the things that marked some of these ministers during Edwards’ day is they were students of their congregation, students of souls as well as the Word. And they tried to be specific in how they addressed the unconverted, those that are grieving, those that are under conviction, the youth, the elderly, those at the beginning and those at the end of their days. I mean, they were scientists. They were physicians of the soul. They knew their people. And so this “Faithful Narrative” that you were talking about earlier. They actually recorded and studied what was going on with various individuals in their conversation, what their conversion experience looked like. They had detailed records of revival movements that were happening in their church. Where did it start? How did it develop? How did it go astray here? What was done to counter this? How did they share this reviva?
Robert Caldwell 33:31
And all that wisdom was carried on through the generations, until about the early 1800s.
Robert Boss 33:37
And these narratives that were shared with other churches served as examples and encouragement, so revival fires had opportunity to spread.
Robert Caldwell 33:49
Well, there’s so much, much more we could talk about. It looks like we’re at a time for Q&A, though?
Moderator 33:59
Absolutely. Dr Caldwell, thank you all so much for getting us started here. For those of you live right now, feel free to drop your questions in the chat, and I will pass them along to Drs. Boss and Caldwell. In the meantime, one of you, Joseph Ko, has already passed us a few questions that we’ll start discussing. So Joseph’s first question is very basic, but very poignant. Dr Caldwell, he simply asks, Why revival?
Robert Caldwell 34:24
Oh yes, why revival? I mean, it’s not the normal rhythm of ministry in, day in and day out. Is that not good enough? I think, in general, that’s what we should be seeking. A normal rhythm of ministry is right and good. But, when I look back at Edwards, to the the New England Puritan tradition. They had this awareness that God would do sometimes do seasons, harvests […] And so, while you continue to tend and do the the normal ministry, there should be an openness, a prayerful expectation that God might not just give gentle showers across a ministry, but rain down a major storm that would refresh the church and the town.
Robert Boss 35:46
When I think about revival, and when I think about the way that they describe outpourings of the Holy Spirit, these torrents of rain. When you’re going through a drought, a spiritual drought, or a church is going through a spiritual drought, they need more than a sprinkle or a slight shower now and then. They need something that can break that drought. Because without water, there is no life. And without rain, there is no life. Look at the Sahara Desert, or places like that. We need life. We need the desert places to turn into a fruit-filled garden. And this was the expectation and the hope of these earlier generations of revival theologians like Edwards and Stoddard. There’s these metaphors, these images, as Edwards liked to say, of water, of rain, of wind, of storm, and also there’s fire. Now our God is a consuming fire. But I was reminded of a 2 Timothy 1:6, where Paul is talking to Timothy. He says, For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. And so I’ve thought about this and about revival, and it is a stirring of the embers that are about to die. It’s just like putting air on.
Robert Boss 37:38
When I was a kid, my dad had a like a chrome pipe, and a lot of times it was my job to stir the fire in the morning, or before I go to bed, to prepare it to last all night and then be able to rekindle it in the morning. But one of the key things is to blow in through that pipe, to have forced air to hit those coals to get white hot. And then you rekindle the whole fire. And this is what revival is. This is an awakening. This is fire. We are trying to pump air by the bellows of the Spirit, which is prayer. The morphology of conversion or revival, I think, is fairly simple. It’s preaching, it’s repentance and faith, and it’s prayer. And it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that, and it can occur in different ways, in different places and at different times. But those components are absolutely necessary. So that type of methodology, those types of things, if they are applied persistently and with great fervency, then a little church can just burst into holy flames. And wonderful things can happen, and people come to Christ. I mean, I’ve seen it! And I also know that the church has to have a heart of prayer, and that means the church needs to come to the point where they’re at the end of themselves, just like when a person becomes converted. Like, when I was converted, I had to be done with me, and I had to turn to God in prayer and submission. […] I was at the end, there wwere no resources. As Al Meredith said, Are you desperate enough? Desperation, being at the end of yourself, that’s when revival [happens], when we get tired of our own machinery and our own ways. Then man, God can do something. And this is not against doing the normal things, but doing those things with an eye and a heart toward God.
Robert Caldwell 40:18
If there’s no expectation, prayerful expectation, no seeking, there won’t be revival. It’s a means, a seeking, prayerful expectation.
Robert Boss 40:34
Draw near to Me and I will draw near to you.These verses in scripture. There are promises that as we pursue God, he will pursue us also. And it can be scary. When you yield yourself to God as an individual, when you submit to God, you’re doing it totally, have your way, your will be done in my life. And when a church does that, oh, watch out! Because God answers those prayers quickly. I mean, he lovespeople whose hearts are contrite and just seeking Him.
Moderator 41:28
There is another question […] that’s of a specific, historical nature, and he mentions there were some strange things happening during the Second Great Awakening on the Kentucky frontier.
Robert Caldwell 41:44
The barking exercise. This was in the frontier, right in in the early American republic that you had emerging at this time.It was called the Great Western Revival in the late 1790s. And you had emerging in this context what’s called the “camp meeting” evangelistic method. It was a new name for something that had been practiced for quite some centuries. But a camp meeting was where, in remote towns, there would be an evangelist or pastor who would say, there’s going to be a sacramental service. It was usually the Lord’s Supper […] And then they would come together. Folks would come from, say, 20, 30, 50, miles around, whole families. They would camp out in an area. There would be times for it’d be a fair-like atmosphere, where people would share […] their canning, their quilts, getting to know their neighbor like a farmer’s market. But then there would be preaching in the evenings of the local ministers, and everyone would would come together and hear these. And so now, because they were outdoors, and because there were multiple preachers preaching, there wasn’t the controls that you had in a congregation or in a church, the kind of controls that many New England churches […] to make sure things won’t devolve. You didn’t have that in this wider, larger camp meeting context. And so you would have these preachings. And people would have these powerful responses to the preaching of sin, of wrath, of hell, as well as to the glories of the gospel. And sometimes people would fall over. They would get what’s called the jerks. They jerked rhythmically. And people couldn’t stop it. Sometimes barking. It was generally a noise made when you had the jerks. […]
Robert Caldwell 44:34
So how do we understand these things? There are some Presbyterians who actually wrote on this subject. And generally, they tried to give a theological analysis of this. A lot of times it was like, We don’t know. Well, the conclusion was, we don’t know where this came from. It was related to the powerful, convicting work of the Spirit. Why? Because many of these people later, they embraced Christ, and they’re continuing to follow. They’re in churches. They’re disciples, meaning they’re followers of Christ. Sometimes you have to wait a long time to determine the validity or the legitimacy, but then the jerks just kind of went away. They just stopped happening. It’s a strange phenomena. So, I don’t have a direct answer to your question. They said, let’s look at the fruits, the long-term fruits, to see what comes of this. And for many people, there was, there was genuine fruit.
Robert Boss 45:39
Well, I think that even during Wesley’s time, there were the same type of phenomenon, people roaring like lions. […] These types of things are universal in these type of revivals, and even in the modern day, the Toronto thing and things that I’ve witnessed. It’s just non-determinate. […]
Robert Caldwell 46:21
And in the revivals that took place, in the Second Great Awakening, the good revivals, there were ministers who had this kind of body of wisdom to know where and how to shape and maybe steer the congregation away from those things you had. You had deep, solid revivals that evinced or demonstrated these marks of the spirit, without questionable things
Robert Boss 47:05
Revivals had to be shepherded.
Robert Caldwell 47:11
You have to have some steering. And those that weren’t steered generally opened up to the […] strange phenomena. Again, it takes the spotlight off of Christ and onto something else. If you were the enemy, what would you want? You want to take people’s minds off of Christ and put it on something else.
Robert Boss 47:53
To the holy laughter thing […] Wesley writes that one time he and his brother Charles were coming home from a meeting, walking and singing psalms and just rejoicing in the work that God had done. And then they were both seized with uncontrollable laughter. They were just so shocked by it, and then they came to the determination that they were being buffeted by the enemy. This was not the Spirit interesting.
Robert Boss 49:01
The thoughtful people recognized it as disruptive. The enemy definitely wants to obstruct God’s work.How did this first Great Awakening end?
Robert Caldwell 49:23
You had this division emerge between Old Lights and New Lights, this polarization. There was a lot of acrimony. Folks that were like, this can’t be God’s work. […]
Moderator 50:14
Well, another question we have from Joseph Ko is something you’ve touched on a bit already. Namely, can you dive a little bit more in detail into how do we experience revival? It is something we definitely want. We long for it. You’ve mentioned prayer. How can we experience revival in our churches today? How is that something we can seek?
Robert Caldwell 50:40
The basic points Rob mentioned earlier, right? prayerfulness, calling others to pray for this. And it’s not just praying for revival. You’re praying for things that you normally want. You want the gospel to go forth. You want people to delight and joy in God. You want them to rejoice in Him and His work on our behalf. Right? There are things he does for us in our lives. He may bring us through difficult times. He might help us with our jobs, and he might help us with our relationships, but a lot of times we’re praying for these things, but we often lose sight of, our relationship with Him and and a closeness with him. And it’s those things, focusing in on the gospel, on prayer, on repentance, repentance from from sin, a hatred of sin, a love of holiness and a seeking of his life in our life, individually and then corporately.
Robert Boss 52:04
Part of coming together like that, in in unity, where two or three are gathered together, that Christ’s presence is promised. […] There’s a mutual love that’s cultivated, reconciliations, hurts that are healed […] mutual forgiveness. There’s this vertical relationship you seek to enhance, and then this lateral relationship towards others. And again, it’s just approached in just utter humility and submission to the Lord. And I don’t know how to make it more complicated than that. It is simple and yet hard at the same time, because we have to get over ourselves and maybe our own agendas,seeking God and loving one another.
Robert Caldwell 53:11
And our preaching should emphasize both law and gospel. Law, right? The wrath of God, the hatred of sin. Those things are generally not taught and preached as often. The gospel is preached, but the law is not.
Robert Boss 53:34
I’ve grown up in Southern Baptist life all my life, yeah, and so the invitation goes like, come forward if you would like to accept Christ. Okay, but if you unpack what that entails, there is the bad news preceding the good news. And those things need to be explicit, because if you can catch a glimpse of God’s wrath, then that just makes love and grace and mercy all the more wonderful. As Edwards would say, catch a sight of the transforming excellency and beauty of Christ, just a sight of Christ will convert you.
Robert Caldwell 54:23
That’s a big element in his theology, as well, seeing God, right? Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. He has this theology of what it is to see the moral excellency of the the beauty. Excellency is a word for an aesthetic concept of the beauty of Christ, the beauty of His Holiness, the beauty of the Gospel, the excellency. If we see those things, it warms the heart. And how do you get to see those things? It’s focused attention. Seek, seek the things that are above, Paul calls us to in a Colossians 3.
Robert Caldwell 55:02
Read Edwards’s “Faithful Narrative of a Surprising Work of God.” That’s his little 75-page narrative that I read from earlier. And then read his “Distinguishing Marks of the Work of the Spirit.” […
