Revival Holy Bedlam

I recently took the time to re-read Jonathan Edwards' famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. I believe the reading of this sermon is a profitable exercise. I highly recommend it to you, friend.

In times past, I have visited the town of Anfield, Connecticut, where an engraved stone marked the spot where the Meeting House stood when Jonathan Edwards stood in the pulpit on July 8, 1741, at the height of the Great Awakening. And as I walked that hallowed spot of ground, I took my time to pace over the length and breadth of that grassy field which now sits across the street from a Presbyterian church. And as I pondered Jonathan Edwards' preaching to that congregation, I felt a holy solemnity about the place where the great God of Heaven had moved in such powerful revival.

It was said of the people in the congregation that night that they were indifferent to the revival that had burned like prairie fires all around the surrounding district but had yet to visit the town of Anfield. And the people there, who were described, they were described as a careless people. That's the group Edwards faced that night.

And that hot evening in July was the setting of what turned out to be a holy bedlam as the vivid imagery of a boiling hell became alive from Edwards' sermon to such a degree. It seemed as if flames lapped up the aisles of the church to where the people said they felt the soles of their shoes become warm from the fire below. A strong man held on to the pillars of the church aisle so not to drop into hell at any moment.

As Edwards progressed in his sermon, a transformation came over the people from being thoughtless and vain to the place where they were bowed down with awful conviction of their sin and danger. Alarm ran through the meeting house as if the whole building was ablaze with the swirling flames of hell. An eyewitness described the scene in the following words.

Before the sermon was done, there was a great moaning and crying out through ye whole house. Oh, what shall I do to be saved? Oh, I am going to hell. Oh, what shall I do for Christ? Until the minister was obliged to desist from preaching for he could not be heard over the shrieks and cries which were so piercing and amazing.

Listen to me, friends. If revival came to us today, it would so shock us and upset us that some of us couldn't handle it. We think revival is a nice time where God sends His love like at a refreshing picnic out in the sun.

But revival is anything but a picnic. It is a trying time, a stripping time, a purging furnace that smokes and boils with the magisterial presence of Almighty God as He smokes sinners out of all their false refuges and, like a skilled surgeon, exposes and lays open all putrefying sores to be dealt with beneath the holy white glare of the searching Spirit of God. In time's revival, the devil rears his ugly head to attack the work of grace as every legion of hell in the form of human dupes attack both the minister and the work.

If you don't believe me, friends, then go pick up a copy of George Whitefield's biography by Luke Tierman and read how Satan raged against Whitefield and the revival. When God shows up in revival, it's a holy bedlam as all hell is breaking loose and all human props are kicked out from beneath nice little church people who never knew what it meant to be saved. The afterglow of revival is holy living and fervent evangelistic effort by saved church members on fire for God.

That's revival, friends, and we are strangers to it. But, oh, how we need it so desperately in our tragic day. Pray that the great God will be pleased to send forth the showers of plentiful effusions of grace in our day.

Let us pray.