1.04. Hear the Words of the Wise
Chapter Four:
Keeping All Things in Balance And Peter said to them, “Repent. . . Be saved from this perverse generation!” (Acts 2:38, Acts 2:40) “But you, be sober in all things” (2 Timothy 4:5) Jonathan Edwards and The First Great Awakening
Along with the other great church luminaries mentioned in the last chapter, Jonathan Edwards also never spoke in tongues nor believed that the revelatory gifts continued past the apostolic age.84 Generally thought of as America’s preeminent theologian, this Calvinistic minister is perhaps best known for his role in sparking America’s first and greatest revival, the Great Awakening of the mid-Eighteenth Century. In 1733 and 1734, Jonathan Edwards preached on “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence” and “Justification By Faith Alone.” As a result of these messages, in Edwards’ own words, “the Spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in and wonderfully to work amongst us,” so that souls began to flock to Christ, as the Savior in whose righteousness alone they hoped to be justified.”85 The Great Awakening had begun. Within a single year, in a town of some 200 families, about 300 souls were saved.86 The former “dullness in religion,” “night walking, and frequenting the tavern and lewd practices” were replaced by a focus on God’s redemptive work.87 The town “seemed to be full of the presence of God: it never was so full of love, nor so full of joy; and yet so full of distress, as it was then.”88 Revival rapidly spread to other New England towns and villages. With regenerated souls came awakened emotions. At the time of conversion, the newly saved frequently manifested an extreme agony over their sinful condition. Edwards wrote that their consciences were “smitten” -- “as if their hearts were pierced through with a dart.”89 They experienced “awful apprehensions” about the depths of their corrupted souls, and a sense that God was just in condemning them. Upon conversion, there was often laughter, tears or loud weeping.90
Meanwhile, revival fires continued to burn. In 1740, George Whitefield visited Northampton and quickened the fervor. The manifestations accompanying conversion this time were “even more bizarre than the earlier ones;” parishioners “bewailed their sins aloud and groaned in fear and repentence.”91
Like Edwards, Whitefield was also a Calvinist who understood the role of emotions and experience in the Christian life. He decried the cold rationalism that infected the Anglican clergy of the day, emphasizing the centrality of the New Birth experience to salvation.92 He was himself prone to tears as he preached.93 When Whitefield preached in Northampton, the power of the Holy Spirit was present. “Few dry eyes were in the assembly.”94 Even Edwards felt “weak in body” and “wept during the whole time of exercise.”95 One account has it that “Mr. Whitefield had scarcely spoken for a minute on the same text when the whole auditorium could be seen to be deeply moved, to be in tears, and to be wringing hands, and the sighing, weeping, and shouting of the people could be heard.”96
Sometimes, however, the manifestations went beyond the emotions of repentence. Occasionally, enthusiasts heard voices and beheld visions, claiming that they had received revelations from God. Extreme manifestations of ecstasy also occurred during some of Whitefield’s sermons. As one account of Whitefield’s Scottish tour put it: “the Bodies of some of the Awakened are seized with Trembling, Fainting, Histerisms in some few Women, and with Convusive-Motions in some others.”97
Edwards strongly condemned these extreme manifestations. He discounted such “false signs” as crying aloud repeated mantras (“Hosanna, Hosanna”), bodily behavior, self-induced affections, and “all other signs testifying not to the faith of children of light but to ‘the presumption of the children of darkness.’“98 He denounced persons who believed that fainting, bodily tremors and “all manner of natural passion” were positive elements of revival.99 These signs were negative, in Edwards’s eyes, because they were unrelated to the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit. and evinced no integration with the redirected heart.100
Yet despite Edwards’ strong condemnations of false affections, he did not fall to the other extreme of rejecting religious experience altogether. To the contrary, Edwards’ life-long theme was that true religion “is a matter of true affections that incline the heart away from self-love and towards God.”101 As Harold Simonson has stated:
It was not Edwards’ intrepid defense of Calvinism per se that made his leadership during the Awakening most notable; it was rather his profound conviction that Calvinist theology was experientially true. He was convinced that human experience corroborates Calvin’s insights. Edwards insisted that unless theology was rooted in experience, it could not be anything more than intellectual speculation.102
Put another way, Edwards was a Calvinist with a heart. He struck a careful balance between validating the very real emotions that accompany repentance and revival and false affections that distract from and do harm to God’s true work. The Second Great Awakening
Unfortunately, the careful balance struck by Edwards was sometimes lost during the Second Great Awakening. The story of the Second Great Awakening must begin with James McGready, a Presbyterian evangelical Calvinist.103 It was McGready’s sermons contrasting the glowing beauties of heaven with the fires and miseries of hell that spread revival across north-central North Carolina beginning in 1791.104 When McGready and several of his converts moved to Kentucky in 1798, revival followed. As John Boles records it:
Under the ministrations of McGready and one of his North Carolina converts, the Reverend John Rankin, such a revival developed at a Gasper River sacramental service that many were quite overcome with emotion and fell to the floor, so deeply were they struck with “heart-piercing conviction.” The uninhibited physical responses to penetrating preaching and beliefs that were soon to characterize the Kentucky phase of the Great Revival here made their first appearance. The revival now gained momentum.105 At first, the emotions accompanying revival were closely tied to repentance. As McGready observed: “instantly the divine flame spread through the whole multitude. Presently you might have seen sinners lying powerless in every part of the house, praying and crying for mercy.”106 Yet, when the revival came to Cane Ridge in August, 1801, it was accompanied by more strange “exercises.” As Boles put it:
Many participants, in the midst of the totality of revival phenomena, seemed to have lost control of their emotions. Considering themselves in the very presence of God, many felt so remorseful for their sins (the horrors of which were usually intensified by the ministers) that they fell apparently senseless to the ground. Others who, perhaps seeking a sense of assurance that they were being saved, unconsciously generated a series of physical “exercises” as evidence of their conviction and justification.107
Camp meeting evangelist Barton Stone categorized these “exercises” into several groupings, among which were:
Falling: The subject would “generally, with a piercing scream, fall like a log on the floor, earth, or mud, and appear as dead.” The Jerks: When the head alone was affected, “it would be jerked backward and forward, or from side to side, so quickly that the features of the face could not be distinguished.” When the whole body was affected, the person would stand in one place and “jerk backward and forward in quick succession, [his] head nearly touching the floor behind and before.”
Dancing: Dancing would often follow the jerks.
Barking: “A person affected with the jerks would often make a grunt, or bark, if you please from the suddenness of the jerk.”
Laughing: The subject would let out “a loud, hearty laughter, but one that excited laughter in none else.”108
Boles has noted that these “grossly exaggerated revival exercises” were “probably restricted to a comparative few” and that “except at the very start, they were never a significant factor in the camp meetings.”109 Professor Bernard Weisberger agrees: “Many stories of unusual transports of holy joy and anguish were undoubtedly stretched. Some came from supporters . . . Others were planted by opponents, who were trying to underscore the element of caricature in the meetings.”110 Thus, for most people, shouting, crying, and falling down were the only physical responses to passionate preaching.111 As Boles put it, “So desperate were many to secure their salvation that they called out in agony, ‘What shall we do to be saved.’“112
Behind the emotional outpouring, especially at the beginning of the Second Great Awakening, there was “a pervasive, strongly believed system of ideas about God and his dealings with men.”113 Early on, Calvinistic Baptist pastor Richard Furman said about the Awakening that it was “a blessed Visitation from on high.”114 Yet, as the camp meetings became more popular and the “convulsions grew more extreme,” opposition from orthodox Baptists and Presbyterians mounted.115 And as the more conservative churches abandoned the movement, its link to theological orthodoxy became more tenuous. The focus became Arminian, rather than Calvinistic.116 Many camp meeting leaders lapsed into heresy. Barton Stone, for example, eventually denied the substitutionary atonement, the Trinity, and the divinity of Christ.117 In addition, some participants began to believe that the jerks, and the other “spasms” were “new revelations of the Spirit.”118 Not surprisingly, the most extreme participants were drawn into the Shaker camp.119 The revival movement declined rapidly after 1805. Indeed, by 1804, the camp meeting had become almost exclusively a Methodist phenomenon, and in their hands, it became less a mysterious work of the Holy Spirit and more “a revival technique.”120 Baptist Edmund Botsworth disapprovingly wrote to Furman in 1803 that many fell “some say, on purpose.”121 By 1835, Charles Finney could say with relative impunity, “A revival is not a miracle, nor dependent on a miracle, in any sense” but that “it is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means.”122 The Place for Experience in the Christian Life As Jonathan Edwards discovered during the First Great Awakening, the Christian life is like walking a tightrope: If we take one step to the left into undue emotionalism or one step to the right into sterile rationalism, we fall. We Baptists have a saying, that Christianity involves a relationship, not a religion. By that, we mean that we do not hold to the staid formalism or empty rituals that typify much of religious expression in our day. After all, even orthodox belief, devoid of a personal relationship with the risen Savior, is dead faith. On the other hand, revivalism is equally invalid. Spiritual ecstasy and mysticism may be exciting and psychologically fulfilling, but they are spiritual poison when devoid of Biblical content and truth. Accordingly, Edwards had it right when he insisted that true religious emotion must inexorably be linked to a sense of fear and trembling before a just and holy God and a fervent desire to repent of sins. In other words, true religious affections derive from a mature love, an agape relationship, or at least, the friendship and devotion of phileo (cf. John 21:15-17). They will derive from a heart of repentance, crying out to God, “Oh, wretched man that I am.” The spiritual ecstacies and excesses of the charismatic movement have a different type of “love,” a selfish storge, as their focus. Their principal concern is not a mutual bond of relationship with Jesus Christ, after repentance of sin, but a mindset of: “How will the Spirit bless me today?” This distinction readily can be seen by contrasting the awakening experiences of Jonathan Edwards’ parishioners with the circus atmosphere of a modern charismatic rally. Edwards movingly wrote of the conversion of a young girl, Phebe Bartlet, in A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, describing her pre-salvation state in terms of “continued crying” and “anguish of spirit.” Contrast this to the state of Richard Roberts’ nine year old daughter at a Rodney Howard-Browne meeting. According to her father, after Howard-Browne laid hands on her, she fell to the ground and laughed for an hour and 45 minutes, and when her parents tried to put her to bed that night, she fell out laughing so hard that they finally had to put her in the bathtub to calm her down.123
Another contrast can be made. Although excesses certainly occurred during the Great Awakenings, revival came as a result of a steady diet of Calvinistic preaching by Edwards, Whitefield, McGready and others. It was the words that mattered, the words of the minister faithfully imparting the Word of God. Yet, in an interview with Christian Research Journal, Rodney Howard-Browne admitted that the message he is preaching is essentially irrelevant to whether people fall out in ecstatic manifestations.124 Thus, despite Third Wave claims to be the spiritual heirs of Jonathan Edwards, there legitimately can be no comparison between Edwards’ sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and the vain repetition of the words to a song led by Howard-Browne: “I am drunk. I am drunk. Every day of my life I am drunk. I’ve been drinking down at Joel’s place every night and every day. I am drunk on new wine.”125
What, then, are we to make of the prophecies, tongues and other ecstatic utterances of the charismatic movement? Certainly, we can assume that at least some of the more bizarre manifestations of ecstasy are Satanic in origin. However, we cannot ascribe all of the emotionalism to the devil. Much of it lies in us. For example, Theodore Barber has suggested that there is little difference between hypnotism and the “high level of suggestability” activated by strong motivational instruction (such as that orchestrated at a typical Toronto Blessing or Rodney Howard-Browne meeting).126 Vern Poythress has noted that free vocalization (speaking in tongues) can be learned and, in fact, “is easier than learning how to ride a bicycle.”127
We have no need, however, to characterize those things that we believe lacks biblical warrant. Rather, we have need of true and genuine revival of the type found in the Great Awakenings. Emotion is an important part of our spiritual life, but a genuine, authentic relationship with Jesus Christ is paramount. In fact, it must be paramount above either excessive emotionalism or sterile rationality. This can be seen by another contrast, this one between two Dallas Theological Seminary teachers. Former Dallas Seminary professor Jack Deere described his life before he became a charismatic in his book, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit as follows:
I knew where I was going. My life was both comfortable and secure. I was in control and liked it that way. Most of the time I felt I knew what God was doing.
***
Over the years, [my wife] had watched my passion for God slowly drying up like the reservoirs in Southern California during a draught. I wasn’t conscious of losing any passion for God. I thought I had just grown up. But she was concerned that I had become complacent and self-satisfied. And she saw my attitudes as an enemy of God’s calling on our lives.128
Unfortunately, Deere’s solution to his spiritual “draught” was to gravitate to the Vineyard movement and fall into excessive emotionalism.
Current Dallas Seminary professor Daniel Wallace’s Christianity was challenged when his 8-year-old son was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma. In a speech before a regional group of the Evangelical Theological Society, Wallace recalled:
Through this experience, I found that the Bible was not adequate. I needed God in a personal way -- not as an object of my study, but as friend, guide, comforter. I needed an existential experience of the Holy One. Quite frankly, I found that the Bible was not the answer. I found the scriptures to be helpful -- even authoritatively helpful -- as a guide. But without feeling God, the Bible gave little solace. In the midst of this “summer from hell,” I began to examine what had become of my faith.129
Out of this personal crisis, Wallace formulated eleven theses or challenges addressed to cesessionists that echo the themes of Jonathan Edwards:
1. Although the sign gifts died in the first century, the Holy Spirit did not.
2. Although charismatics have given a higher priority to experience than to relationship, rationalistic evangelicals have given a higher priority to knowledge than to relationship.
3. This emphasis on knowledge over relationship has produced in us a bibliolatry.
4. The net effect of such bibliolatry is a depersonalization of God.
5. Part of the motivation for this depersonalization of God is our increasing craving for control.
6. God is still a God of healing and miracles.
7. Evangelical rationalism can lead to spiritual defection.
8. The power brokers of rational evangelicalism, since the turn of the century, have been white, obsessive-compulsive males.
9. The Holy Spirit’s guidance is still needed in discerning the will of God.
10. In the midst of seeking out the power of the Spirit, we must not avoid the sufferings of Christ.
11. To what does the Spirit bear witness?130 As cessationists, we would do well to grapple with these issues.
Questions to Charismatics At the same time, however, charismatics would do well to grapple with the following questions:
Issue 1: Is the canon of Scripture closed or open? This is the article on which the charismatic movement must stand or fall. It will not do to say that the canon is closed, but that God still speaks to man directly today through the same means and in the same way as He spoke, through special revelation, before the close of the canon. It also will not do to assert that God speaks today through “fallible” revelation (as opposed to the infallible revelation of Scripture). Either God’s revelation is capable of error or it is not.
Issue 2: Is primacy to be found in biblical authority or experience? This point is closely related to, but distinct from, the first. Put another way, is truth objective and propositional, or subjective and personal? Historical Christianity has always held to the belief that truth is objective and propositional, as found in the Word of God. However, the modern charismatic movement has drifted from that firm anchor, in teaching that truth can take the form of personal revelation. The resemblence to neo-orthodoxy is striking. Jack Taylor has written that “The Bible is the Word of God. . . only when the Holy Spirit who inspires it enlivens it. Only then does it have life and power. Until then it is document; document is letter, and letter kills.”131 Do charismatics agree with Taylor?
Issue 3: Is Scripture sufficient for faith and practice and, equally importantly, for life? 2 Peter 1:3 affirms that it is. Yet Jack Taylor has written that the traditional Baptist (really Petrine) doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture is “the dung of meaningless tradition and unbiblical ideas.”132 Do charismatics agree? If they do affirm the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture, what need is there for personal revelation to supplement what is all-sufficient?
Issue 4: Will our central focus be on the Savior or the Spirit? One of the cardinal Reformation principles was that of solo Christo. Should we keep that tenet, or change the focus to the Holy Spirit? Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would point to the Son. Can we do otherwise? If not, where is the condemnation of Rodney Howard-Browne?
(sola Christo)
Issue 5: Should we expect more to the Christian life? The charismatic movement (particularly, its Vineyard element) has attracted many Calvinists and professional theologians.133 Many of these individuals had previously embraced Christianity only “from the neck up.”134 Many of them have longed for something more than “cognitive Christianity.” This need for “something more” has always been there. It drove the Montanist movement in the early years of the church. As Griffith Thomas has noted, from a psychological standpoint, Montanism had its origin in “the recognition of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in a Church that was already tending to become too rigid in its intellectual conceptions and ecclesiastical organisation.”135 Its adherents wanted to experience “something more.”
We are responsible to offer “something more” than either sterile rationalism or destructive emotionalism. We must offer a personal, real relationship with Jesus Christ. This relationship involves all the normal emotions involved in a love relationship (love, joy, peace). As Edwards said in A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections:
There is no true religion where there is no religious affection. As on the one hand, there must be light in the understanding, as well as an affected fervent heart; where there is heat without light, there can be nothing divine or heavenly in that heart; so on the other hand, where there is a kind of light without heat, a head stored with notions and speculations, with a cold and unaffected heart, there can be nothing divine in that light, that knowledge is no true spiritual knowledge of divine things.136 Edwards got the balance right. Following in his footsteps is our challenge.
1 Keith Hinson, “Florida Board Disfellowships 2 Charismatic Churches,” Baptist Press, May 20, 1996.
2 Michael Chute, “Inverness church ‘resigns’ from convention,” Florida Baptist Witness, 19 Sept. 1996, 5.
3 Keith Hinson, “Theology Key Concern in Florida Controversy,” Baptist Press, May 8, 1996.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 I adopt Richard Gaffin’s use of this term to describe prophesy and its assessment, tongues and their interpretation, the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. See Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., “A Cessationist View,” in Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? Four Views ed. Wayne A. Grudem (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 42.
7 Since 1960, the charismatic movement has exploded beyond Pentecostal denominational barriers. It has infiltrated virtually every mainline denomination -- at first, Episcopal, Lutheran, and Presbyterian, later, Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox. See Walter Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books 1984), 205.
8 Indeed, key charismatic theologian Wayne Grudem apparently now attends a Southern Baptist church. See Wayne A. Grudem, preface to Are Miraculous Gifts for Today, 15.
9 John H. Armstrong, “In Search of Spiritual Power” in Power Religion, ed. Michael Horton (Chicago: Moody Press, 1992), 62.
10 Grudem, preface to Are Miraculous Gifts for Today, 10.
11 Phillip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 417.
12 This date derives from Eusebius. Modern scholars believe this date to be too late, variously contending that Montanism originated between 126 and 180 A.D. See Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 418 n.1.
13 Ibid, 418.
14 Ibid, 423.
15 Ibid.
16 Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 733.
17 Ibid.
18 Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (London: Pelican Books, 1967; Penguin Books, 1990), 52.
19 Ibid.
20 Frederick Dale Bruner, A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 36.
21 Eusebius, The History of the Church, Translated, G.A. Williamson, revised and edited, Andrew Louth (London: Penguin Books, 1989), 161.
22 Chadwick, The Early Church, 52.
23 Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 422.
24 Bruner, A Theology of the Holy Spirit, 36.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid, 37.
27 Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 732.
28 Chadwick, The Early Church, 53.
29 Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 419.
30 John F. Walvoord, The Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1991), 239.
31 George Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1889), quoted in Walvoord, The Holy Spirit, 239.
32 Ibid.
33 Chadwick, The Early Church, 53.
34 Parenthetically, the purpose of tongues was related, but somewhat different. Tongues were for unbelievers, specifically, as a sign to unbelieving Jews (1 Corinthians 14:22; cf. Isaiah 28:11-12). Their purpose was to assist in discerning whether the apostles’ message was from God or not, since the people did not have the written New Testament to demonstrate the validity of the message. See generally William G. Bellshaw, “The Confusion of Tongues,” Biblia Sacra 120, no. 478 (1963): 145, 148-150.
35 Gaffin, “A Cessationist View,” 44.
36 Walvoord, John F. and Zuck, Roy B., The Bible Knowledge Commentary (Wheaton, Ill.: Scripture Press Publications, Inc., 1983, 1985, Logos Bible Software edition); Michael Green, 2 Peter and Jude: Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids, MI: IVP/Eerdmans, 1987), 171.
37 Green, 2 Peter and Jude, 171.
38 Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc. 1995).
39 Jack R. Taylor, The Word of God With Power (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1993), 18.
40 Ibid, 20.
41 Ibid, 23.
42 Jack Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1993), 214.
43 Ibid, 213-214.
44 Jack Deere, Vineyard Position Paper # 2: The Vineyard’s Response to The Briefing (Anaheim, Calif.: Association of Vineyard Churches, 1992, 22-23, quoted in R. Fowler White, “Does God Speak Today Apart From the Bible?,” in The Coming Evangelical Crisis, ed., John H. Armstrong (Chicago: Moody Press, 1996), 78.
45 David S. Dockery, Christian Scripture (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1995), 16.
46 Erickson, Christian Theology, p. 200.
47 Charles C. Ryrie, Basic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1986), 63-64.
48 Erickson, 190.
49 Dockery, Christian Scripture, 41.
50 Ibid.
51 Ryrie, Basic Theology, 116.
52 For example, he quotes approvingly from Watchman Nee, who wrote that “revelation (what I have previously referred to as illumination) means that God again breathes on His Word when I read Romans two thousand years later. . . . Inspiration is given only once; revelation is given repeatedly. By revelation we mean that today God again breathes on His Word, the Holy Spirit imparts light to me. . . . What again is revelation? Revelation occurs when God reactivates His Word by His Spirit that it may be living and full of life as at the time when it was first written.” Taylor, The Word of God With Power, 49-50.
53 John Murray, “The Guidance of the Holy Spirit” in Collected Writings of John Murray, Volume 1: The Claims of Truth (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976), 188-189, quoted in “R. Fowler White, “Does God Speak Today Apart From the Bible” in The Coming Evangelical Crisis, ed. John H. Armstrong (Chicago: Moody Press, 1996), 87-88 (n.6).
54 Ibid.
55 White, “Does God Speak Today Apart From the Bible?”, 79.
56 Ibid, 86.
57 Lee apparently joined the Shakers after the death of all four of her children, and as a result of this experience, she advocated a lifetime of celibacy among its adherents.
58 Edward Deming Andrews, The People Called Shakers (Oxford University Press, 1953; New York: Dover Publications, 1963), xi.
59 Ibid, 28
60 Ibid, 12.
61 Ibid, 29.
62 Ibid, 11-12.
63 Ibid, 11.
64 Additional information about the Shakers may be found at the following Internet sites: (a) Steve Lim, “Shakers: History of the Group,” http://ctdnet.acns.nwu.edu/skul/”; (b) “Shakers and Shakerism,” “ http://www. nypl.org/” and (c) Karl Mang, “The Shakers - Another America,” “ http://www.shakerworkshops.com.”
65 John F. MacArthur, Charismatic Chaos (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 73.
66 It is recorded of the early Quakers that, as they sange and danced, “the Devil roared in these deceived souls in a most strange and dreadful Manner, some howling, some shrieking, yelling, roaring, and some had a strange confused kind of humming, singing Noise. . . about the one Half of these miserable Creatures were terribly shaken with violent Motions.” Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 137.
67 Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 136.
68 David duPlessis, “Golden Jubilees,” IRM, 47 (April 1958), 193-94, as quoted in Bruner, A Theology of the Holy Spirit, 27.
69 J.A. Synan, “The Purpose of God in the Pentacostal Movement for This Hour,” Pentecostal World Conference Messages 1958, quoted in Bruner, 27-28.
70 See George W. Dollar, “A Symposium on the Tongues Movement Part II: Church History and the Tongues Movement,” Biblia Sacra 120, no. 480 (1963): 316, 317; “Cleon L. Rogers, Jr., “The Gift of Tongues in the Post Apostolic Church (a.d. 100-400), Biblia Sacra 122, no. 486 (1965): 134, 135-143.
71 Ibid.
72 L. Russ Bush and Tom J. Nettles, Baptists and the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 14.
73 Ibid, 51. Bush and Nettles note that the phrase “contained in the Canonicall Scriptures” does not refer to a belief that God’s words are intermixed with other words, but could as well be stated “limited to the Canonicall Scriptures.” Ibid, 53. Indeed, when the confession was republished in 1651, it was accompanied by an essay against Quakers which declared that the Bible contains “the whole Minde, will, and Law of God, for us and all Saints to believe and practise throughout all ages.” Ibid, 56.
74 Ibid, 62-63. Significantly, the expression that the Bible is “the only sufficient” rule of knowledge, faith and obedience is an addition from the Westminster Confession of Faith, from which the Second London Confession is modeled. Ibid., 65.
75 Ibid, 64.
76 Ibid, 105.
77 Ibid, 107.
78 Ibid, 31.
79 Ibid, 34.
80 Ibid, 78.
81 Ibid, 225.
82 Ibid, 387.
83 Rene Pache, The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit (Chicago: Moody Press, 1954), 184.
84 E.g., Jonathan Edwards, “Charity More Excelleant Than the Extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit” available on the Internet at http://www.dallas.net/~trigsted/jedwards.”
85 Jonathan Edwards, “A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards vol. 1 (Worcester, 1834, reprinted, Edinburgh, Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), 348.
86 Ibid, 350.
87 Edwards, “A Faithful Narrative” in vol. 1, Works, 347.
88 Ibid, 348.
89 Ibid, 350.
90 Ibid, 351-52.
91 Harold Simonson, Jonathan Edwards: Theologian of the Heart (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), 49.
92 Ibid, 97,
93 Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 41-42.
94 Ibid, 126.
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid, 251.
97 Ibid, 150, quoting James Robe, Faithful Narrative of the Extraordinary Work of the Spirit of God at Kilsyth.
98 Ibid, 58.
99 Ibid, 50.
100 Ibid.
101 Ibid, 13.
102 Ibid, 12-13.
103 John Boles records that McGready was “more interested in the salvation of his listeners than in constructing a formal creed” but that his sermons did “reflect the theological subtleties of evangelical Calvinism.” John B. Boles, The Great Revival, 1787-1805: The Origins of the Southern Evangelical Mind (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1972), 40.
104 Ibid, 40-41. As one observer described McGready’s sermons: “Father McGready would so describe Heaven, that you would almost see its glories. . . and he would so array hell and its horrors before the wicked, that they would tremble and quake, imagining a lake of fire and brimstone yawning to overwhelm them.” See Timothy K. Beougher, “Did You Know? Little Known and Remarkable Facts About Camp Meetings and Circuit Riders,” Christian History 14, no. 45 (1995): 2.
105 Boles, The Great Revival, 49.
106 McGready, Narrative of the Commencement of the Revival, xiii, quoted in Boles, The Great Revival, 56.
107 Ibid, 67.
108 “Piercing Screams and Heavenly Smiles” Christian History 14, no. 45 (1995): 15.
109 Boles, The Great Revival, 68.
110 Bernard A. Weisberger, They Gathered at the River (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958), 35, quoted in Keith J. Hardman, Charles Grandison Finney 1792-1875: Revivalist and Reformer (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 58.
111 Boles, The Great Revival, 68.
112 Ibid, 76.
113 Ibid, 70.
114 Ibid, 80.
115 Ibid, 89.
116 For example, the views of revivalist Richard McNemar were considered, after examination, to have been “essentially different from Calvinism” but “clothed in such expressions and handed out in such a manner, as to keep the body of the people in the dark, and lead them insensibly into Arminian principles; which are dangerous to the souls of men, and hostile to the interests of all true religion.” Barton W. Stone, History of the Christian Church in the West (Lexington, KY: 1956), 4, quoted in Boles, The Great Revival, 150-151.
117 Ibid, 153; David L. Goetz, “Trendsetters in the Religious Wilderness,” Christian History 14, no. 45 (1995); 26, 27.
118 Ibid, 92.
119 Ibid, 100. Upon reflection, Barton Stone ruefully acknowledged that circumstances were right for Shakers to gain converts: “Some of us were verging on fanaticism; some were so disgusted at the spirit of opposition against us, and the evils of division, that they were almost led to doubt the truth of religion in toto; and some were earnestly breathing after perfection in holiness.” Stone, Autobiography, 184, quoted in Boles, The Great Revival, 157.
120 Ibid, 89-90.
121 Ibid, 95.
122 Keith J. Hardman, Charles Grandison Finney 1792-1875: Revivalist and Reformer (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 21.
123 Julia Duin, “An Evening With Rodney Howard-Browne,” Christian Research Journal (Winter, 1995), 43.
124 Ibid.
125 Ibid.
126 See Theodore X. Barber, “Who Believes in Hypnosis?” Psychology Today 4 (July 1970): 20-27, 84, cited in Boles, The Great Revival, 67.
127 Vern S. Poythress, “Linguistic and Sociological Analyses of Modern Tongues-Speaking: Their Contributions and Limitations,” Westminster Theological Journal 42, no. 2 (1980): 367, 369.
128 Jack Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993), 13, 15-16.
129 Daniel B. Wallace, “The Uneasy Conscience of a Non-Charismatic Evangelical,” Speech before the Evangelical Theological Society, Southwest Regional Meeting, 4 March 1994, available on the internet: /docs/soapbox/estsw.htm>.
130 Ibid.
131 Taylor, The Word of God With Power, 29.
132 Ibid, 178.
133 See, e.g., Daniel B. Wallace, “Charismata and the Authority of Personal Experience,” available on the Internet: /docs/soapbox/personal.htm.
134 This phrase belongs to Dr. Wallace. Ibid.
135 W.H. Griffith Thomas, The Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1986), p. 80.
136 Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections in The Works of Jonathan Edwards vol. 1 (Worcester, 1834, reprinted, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1995), 243.