The impact of our church is minuscule when you consider the myriads of people who live in the Frederick area. Do not we, along with other area Bible-based churches, offer Jesus Christ, the bread of life? Are not we ambassadors for the King of the universe? Is not our message of God reconciling sinners to himself the most revolutionary message in the world? Then why is our influence so negligible?
Is there any hope for making a broader impact on our culture? The testimony of history is yes. God has brought spiritual awakenings before; He can do it again.
The Testimony of History
Conditions in England before the spiritual awakening of the mid-eighteenth century were worse than ours. The British Parliament sometimes had to dismiss because its members were too drunk to continue. Children were mistreated, often deliberately maimed or blinded so that they would become more lucrative beggars. The church was a spiritual corpse, led largely by unconverted clerics.
When John Wesley arrived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in May, 1742, he wrote: “I was surprised; so much drunkenness, cursing and swearing (even from the mouths of little children) do I never remember to have seen and heard before in so small a compass of time. Surely this place is ripe for Him who ‘came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’” (Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope, xx).
Then God brought the Great Awakening to Britain and the United States. Jonathan Edwards wrote, “When the Holy Spirit did set in, as much was done in a few days as at ordinary times in a year or two.” Hundreds of thousands turned to Jesus Christ, effectively changing the course of British and American history.
During the first Great Awakening under Jonathan Edwards (1730-45), some 50,000 people joined the Christian churches in America. From 1857 to 1859 during the Second Great Awakening, half a million joined the church. Martyn Lloyd-Jones emphasizes:
They joined the Christian church. They were not admitted immediately. They were tested and examined; they were instructed as catechumens and they were trained. I am not talking about decisions…. I am referring to people who, having given such clear evidence of their conversion and their regeneration, were admitted into the full membership of the Christian Church. Half a million a hundred years ago in the United States. 100,000 in Ulster alone joined the churches during that time and 50,000 in Wales. And when you remember the population figures you see the significance of these striking facts (Lloyd-Jones, Revival, p. 107).
Our Confidence is in God
Our confidence that spiritual awakening may again come lies not in our ingenuity, techniques or gimmicks, but in the promises and power of God.
In 1793 William Carey left England for India. He was overwhelmed by India’s poverty, illness and immense spiritual darkness. Carey saw not a single conversion for the first five and a half years. Though discouraged, Carey’s faith did not waver. He wrote:
“When I left England, my hope of India's conversion was very strong; but amongst so many obstacles, it would die, unless upheld by God. Well, I have God, and His Word is true. Though the superstitions of the heathen were a thousand times stronger than they are, and the example of the Europeans a thousand times worse; though I were deserted by all and persecuted by all, yet my faith, fixed on the sure Word, would rise above all obstructions and overcome every trial. God's cause will triumph.”
The first evidences of progress -- the conversion of Krishna Pal in 1800, and the appearance of Carey's Bengali New Testament in 1801 -- were so small as to be unnoticed by the world. But to Carey and his colleagues the Hindu's conversion was momentous; “He was only one, but a continent was coming behind him. The divine grace which changed one Indian's heart, could obviously change a hundred thousand.”
By 1813 more than five hundred had been baptized -- some at the cost of their lives -- and the Scriptures were being printed in fifteen languages. In 1818 a college was erected at Serampore….
When Carey died, in 1834, he had lived to see twenty-six gospel churches planted in India, with more than forty fellow-labourers engaged in the work. He had himself translated the Scriptures or parts of them into no less than thirty-four languages, including six completed translations of the whole Bible and twenty-three of the New Testament! (Murray, The Puritan Hope, pp. 140-41)
The Lesson for Us
God has revealed His arm before; He may well do it again. What kind of people should we then be?
We should be steadfast in prayer, serious about living holy lives, faithful in proclaiming God’s Word, confident in God’s promises and power. Daily we should pray, “God, do it again!”
Peter Kemeny
Good News Presbyterian Church
