Revival Scenes

We are in the Evangelism Awakening Revival Institutes, and if you'll turn in your handouts to Session 9, Revival Scenes, our churches today desperately need revival. We need a touch from heaven. Revival implies a spiritual declension.

Prior to periods of revival, everything spiritual is often a wasteland. Churches in disarray, within fighting and division, widespread apostasy, and the increase of false doctrines. Before Wesleyan Whitfield appeared on the scene and a powerful revival in England, England was in the grip of drunkenness and debauchery.

It was said at the time, said in London, every fifth house was a gin shop, and members of Parliament would often show up for work dead drunk. There's a famous print by the artist Hogarth, depicting the times in London in the mid-18th century. In the painting, a woman is nursing a baby, and she is dead drunk.

Behind her is a man committing suicide. An undertaker's coffin sign advertises his growing business. Men are shown gambling, quarreling.

There is a pawn shop where people are selling all they have to buy more gin. It's a scene of unrestrained evil, and this is an accurate picture of what London was like before God came and such a powerful revival that shook the entire continent. I like what Stephen Alford said about times of revival.

He wrote, It is little wonder that the preaching that followed Pentecost convicted men and women, so that they had to cry out, Brethren, what shall we do? A revival can never come without an exposure of and judgment on sin. And I agree with that, friends. John Song, whom God used to shake China and might a revival, had this to say regarding how God poured out His Spirit in revival in Nanchang in 1931.

John Song wrote in his diary, Suddenly I felt deeply touched to speak on sin and salvation. Those who have not been touched by the Holy Spirit are not aware of sin, and those who are not aware of sin cannot accept salvation from the Lord. I agree with John Song that there is much false faith today, and from the absence of the Holy Spirit in salvation, men today join the church like they do a country club, just on a decision.

Too many in our church today remain unconverted because they merely made a mental flip for Jesus. And few pastors today recognize the times and the need for revival by preaching revival sermons to promote revival. An advertisement in a Boston paper in 1702 read, Ichabod, or discourse, showing what cause there is to fear that the glory of the Lord is departing from New England, delivered in two sermons by Increase Mather.

Our problem today, friends, is a lack of preaching the full counsel of God, and the modern church has become a sideshow of entertainment. The great Methodist preacher Samuel Chadwick commented, When the church is run on the same lines as a circus, there may be crowds, but there is no Shekinah. Well, we are going to look at some historical scenes of revival today where God has moved in former times.

I'll never forget Rolf Barnard saying that when he was a young preacher, he had an opportunity to preach in Rochester, New York, and one of the age deacons of the church had been alive when Finney was in Rochester, and this elderly man took Barnard throughout the town square, and he would point to the various locations of the revival. He would say something like, See that street corner there? During the revival, you could not walk down the street without seeing men in their business suits kneeling on the sidewalk in prayer, weeping in broad daylight. Well, I want to relate to you, friends, a revival scene from the memoirs of Charles Finney, which occurred during the Second Great Awakening, and before I get to the story, it's important to make an observation about Finney, and this was his eyes.

They were said to be as piercing as hawks. A minister said of Finney's eyes, he seemed to look through and through, and hold you with its fascination, under its continued scrutiny, till you felt your very soul was searched. Well, bear those comments in mind, friends, as we proceed with the story, because revival breaks out in a mill, because of Finney's piercing look.

Here now are his own words. There was a cotton manufacturer in a place now called New York Mills. I was invited to go and preach at that place, and went up one evening and preached in the village schoolhouse, which was of large size, and was crowded to its utmost capacity.

The word I could see took powerful effect among the people, especially among the young people who were at work in the factory. The next morning, after breakfast, I went to the factory to look through it. As I went through the factory, I observed there was a good deal of agitation among those that were busy at their looms.

On passing through one of the apartments, where a great number of young women were attending to their spinning or weaving, I observed a couple of them eyeing me, and speaking very earnestly to each other, and I could see they were a good deal agitated, although they both laughed. I went slowly towards them. They saw me coming, and were evidently much excited.

The thread of them broke, and I observed that her hands trembled, so she could not mend it. I approached slowly, looking on each side of the machinery as I passed, but observed that the girl grew more and more agitated, and could not proceed with her work. When I came within eight or ten feet of her, I looked solemnly at her.

She observed it, and was quite overcome, and sunk down, and burst into tears. That impression caught almost like powder, and in a few moments all in the room were in tears. This feeling spread through the factory.

Mr. Wolcott, the owner of the establishment, was present, and seeing the state of things, he said to the superintendent, Stop the mill, and let the people attend to religion, for it is more important that our souls should be saved than that this factory run. The gate was immediately shut down, and the factory stopped, but where should we assemble? The superintendent suggested that the mule room was large, and the mules being run up, we could assemble there. We did so, and a powerful meeting I scarcely ever saw.

It went on with great power. The building was large, and had a great many people in it, from the garret to the cellar. The revival went through the mill with astonishing power, and in the course of a few days nearly all in the mill were hopefully converted.

Well, I loved that story of Finney and the mill friends, and our next subject in Sains Revival occurred under the ministry of Sam Jones. Sam Jones was well known for his pithy sayings, and he became the most well-known evangelist to emerge out of the South. He was a contemporary with D.L. Moody, and he became famous for fighting against the liquor crowd.

Sam Jones had been an alcoholic when he was a lawyer. Before he was called to preach, he would say about his past life, How did I become a drunkard? By drinking wine like some of you do. If any man had tasted what I have, and been where I've been, he'd be recreating if he did not preach as I do.

I'm not only not gonna drink, but I'll fight it to perdition, and when perdition freezes, then I'll fight it on the ice. Nobody but an infernal scoundrel will sell whiskey, and nobody but an infernal fool will drink it. The greatest revival ever to hit Nashville, Tennessee occurred under the ministry of Sam Jones.

So wide was it in its power and lasting in its influence that the citizens of Nashville voted to build Sam Jones an elaborate home in his hometown of Quartersville, Georgia. You can tour that mansion today, friends, as it is preserved by the local historical society. That home was built from the appreciation of thousands of converts from the great Nashville revival.

The year was 1885, and Sam Jones preached a crowded, overflowing tents of 10,000 hearers, which means one out of every five in Nashville heard him. The entire city was alarmed and gripped with revival. As a preacher, Sam Jones knew how to hold his crowd in the palms of his hands.

The South was still healing from the Civil War, and Sam Jones began his meeting with the following story. General John Bell Hood was watching with anguish as the Union forces, entrenched in a fort near a locust grove, rained fire upon the faltering Confederates. Twice General Hood sent his adjutant to generals in the field, presenting his compliments and asking for the fort.

Twice he was told that the officers had fallen. The third time Hood instructed the adjutant to present his love to General Cockrell and ask for the fort in the locust grove. General Cockrell, straightened himself on the saddle, cast his bright eye down the line and said, First Missouri Brigade, attention, and dropped his finger on the fort, and they charged, with a fearful loss, on that fort, and captured it, and silenced the guns.

Then Sam Jones looked over the vast assembly, and with a choked voice said, Brethren of Nashville, at this hour an Adjutant General of the Lord Jesus Christ, I point my finger at the Citadel of Sin in Nashville, and I tell you that my Lord and Savior presents you all his love, and he asks at your hands this fort that is desolating so many hearts. Well, when Sam Jones called upon all to stand who wanted God to have the victory, the people rose to their feet with tears streaming down their faces. But the most sensational element of that revival was one of its most famous converts.

He was a notorious riverboat captain who ran and owned a fleet of steamboats on the Cumberland River. They were floating gambling halls and liquor taverns. Tom Ryman was a figure of mythic proportions in Nashville.

He owned thirty-five steamboats that carried cargos of cotton and booze and dancing girls that entertained in those floating ornate gambling casinos. It was said of Tom Ryman that he was a swinging soul who ran floating dens of iniquity. He was called Steamboat Ryman, and he came to see one of Sam Jones' meetings to protect his liquor business.

Jones that night preached a sermon on the devil's brew and the rascals who served it. Jones hit hard for an hour and a half. Well, this combination of accusation and entreaty was too much for Tom Ryman, who walked up to the platform leaning heavily on his cane.

As he got up alongside of Sam Jones, he announced to the crowd who knew him so well, I came here for the purpose stated by Mr. Jones, and he is with me with the gospel of Christ. Well, Ryman gave his heart to God and his allegiance to Sam Jones, building him a large auditorium in Nashville to preach in. That building still stands today as the mother of the Church of Country Music, the Ryman Auditorium.

Tom Ryman's old corrupt life was miraculously transformed. He converted his saloon on the wharf into the Sam Jones Hall, and he hired a minister for the steamboat men and gamblers and drunkards who washed up on the river bank. And for the next 20 years, two wagons were a familiar sight to the people of Nashville.

One wagon was filled with food, medicine, and clothing for the poor. The other carried the good news of the gospel into the neighborhoods without churches, and it was equipped with its choir, organ, and pulpit. When Tom Ryman died of a carriage wreck in 1904, Sam Jones addressed 4,000 people who attended the funeral, and it was held in the Ryman Auditorium.

The revival that gripped Nashville under Sam Jones was powerful and long-lasting. It literally transformed the life of the town, and that's what revival does, friends. Well, this concludes our session today.

We will prepare for session 10.