Revival Stories Finney's Fire

In 1740, when God moved through New England, it was called the Great Awakening. Revival has often been referred to as an awakening. At Gethsemane, Jesus faced the crisis point of his earthly ministry, and his disciples slept right through it.

Today, the church is in a crisis point, and we are sleeping right through it. I believe, friends, the only thing that can turn our nation around is a spiritual awakening sent from God Almighty, and a revival in the church among God's people. Therefore, I believe it's imperative that we not only pray for revival, but study how God has moved in former times, in seasons of revival.

In former days, wise pastors would read revival stories to their congregations to stir their hearts to pray for revival. This was the case in the day of Jonathan Edwards in a small town outside of Glasgow in Cambuslang. A little parish there with a pastor by the name of William McCulloch started reading stories about the revival that was taking place in New England under Edwards.

In the revivals, they were happening under Whitefield in England. At the invitation of this pastor, Whitefield came to his church in Cambuslang, and what happened next was God came down in majesty because at 11 o'clock at night, there were 30,000 people out there on the preaching brace. Whitefield said it looked like a battlefield.

People were lying on the ground moaning, slain by the sword of the spirit, and it was a season of heaven on earth. And it all began when this pastor William McCulloch started reading his people stories of revival, and it turned their hearts to God, and they started praying for revival. It is my intention this evening friends to do the same.

I want to read us an excerpt from the memoirs of Charles Finney, and I'll preface it with this. I don't agree with theology or methodology of Charles Finney. We differ too much to come to any common ground there, but I cannot ignore how God used Finney in the early part of the second great awakening as a human instrument, and I want to take this time to read an occurrence, a revival that occurred in New York in the year of 1824, where the manifestation of a holy God came upon a wicked town under the preaching of Charles Finney.

I hear now are the words of Charles Finney as he related this account during the second great awakening. I must now give some account of my labors and other results at Antwerp, a village north of Evans Mills. I arrived there the first time in April, and found that no religious services of any kind were held in that town.

I very soon learned that there was a Presbyterian church in that place, consistent of but few members. They had had some years before, tried to keep up a meeting at the village on the Sabbath, but one of the elders who conducted their Sabbath meeting lived about five miles out of the village, and was obliged in approaching the village to pass through a Universalist settlement. The Universalists had broken up their village meeting by rendering it impossible for Deacon Randall, as they called him, to get through their village and get to meeting.

They would even take off the wheels of his carriage, and finally they carried their opposition so far that he gave up. He gave up attending meetings at the village, and all religious services at the village or in the township, so far as I could learn, were relinquished altogether. In passing around the village I heard a vast amount of profanity.

I thought I had never heard so much in any place that I had ever visited. It seemed as if the men, in playing ball upon the green, and in every business place that I stepped into, were all cursing and swearing and damning each other. I felt as if I had arrived upon the borders of hell.

I had a kind of awful feeling, I recollect, as I passed around the village on Saturday. The very atmosphere seemed to me to be poisoned, and a kind of terror took possession of me. I gave myself to prayer on Saturday, and finally urged my petition, till this answer came from Acts 18.

Be not afraid to speak, and hold not that peace, for I am with thee, and no man shall sit on thee to hurt thee, for I have much people in this city. This completely relieved me of all fear. I found, however, that the Christian people there were really afraid that something serious might happen if religious meetings were established in that place again.

On the third Sabbath that I preached there, an aged man came to me, as I came out of the pulpit, and asked me if I would go and preach in a schoolhouse in his neighborhood, saying that they had never had any services there. He told me that it was about three miles in a certain direction. He wished me to come as soon as I could.

I appointed the next day, Monday, at five o'clock in the afternoon. It was a warm day. I left my horse at the village, and I thought I would walk down, so that I should have no trouble in calling along on the people in the neighborhood of the schoolhouse on my way.

However, before I got to the place, having labored so hard on the Sabbath, I found myself very much exhausted, and sat down by the way, and felt as if I could scarcely proceed. I blamed myself for not having taken my horse. When I arrived at the appointed hour, I found the schoolhouse full, and I could only get a standing place near the door, which stood open, and the windows were all open.

I read a hymn, and I cannot call it singing, for they seemed never to have had any church music in that place. However, they pretended to sing, but it amounted to about this. Each one bawled in his own way.

My ears had been cultivated by teaching church music, and their horrible discord distressed me so much that, at first, I thought I must go out. I finally put both hands over my ears, and held them with the full strength of my arms, but this did not shut out all the discords. I held my head down, over my knees, with my hands on my ears, and shook my head, and tried as far as possible to get rid of the horrible discords that seemed almost to make me mad.

I stood it, however, until they were through, and then I cast myself down on my knees, almost in a state of desperation, and began to pray. The Lord opened the windows of heaven, and the spirit of prayer was poured out, and I let my whole heart out in prayer. I had taken no thought with regard to a text upon which to preach, but waited to see the congregation, as I was in the habit of doing in those days, before I selected a text.

As soon as I had done praying, I rose from my knees and said, "'Up! Get ye out of this place, for the Lord will destroy the city!' I said. I did not recollect where the text was, but I told them, very nearly, where they would find it, and then went on to explain it. I said that there was such a man as Abraham, and also who he was, and that there was such a man as Lot, and who he was.

Their relations to each other, their separating from each other, on account of differences between their herdmen, and that Abraham took the hill country, and Lot settled in the vale of Sodom. I then told them how exceedingly wicked Sodom became, and what abominable practices they fell into. I told them that the Lord decided to destroy Sodom, and visited Abraham, and informed him what he was about to do, that Abraham prayed to the Lord to spare Sodom, if he found so many righteous there, and the Lord promised to do so for their sakes, that then Abraham besought him to save it for a certain less number, and the Lord said he would spare it for their sakes, that he kept on reducing the number, until he reduced the number of righteous persons to ten, and God promised him that if he found ten righteous persons in the city, he would spare it.

Abraham made no further request, and Jehovah left him. But it was found that there was but one righteous person there, and that was Lot, Abraham's nephew. And the men said to Lot, Hast thou hear any besides? Son-in-law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place, for we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is wax and grate before the face of the Lord, and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it.

And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons-in-laws, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place, for the Lord will destroy the city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-laws. And while I was relating these facts, I observed the people looked as if they were angry.

Many the men were in their shirtsleeves, and they looked at each other, and at me, as if they were ready to pitch into me, and chastise me for something on the spot. I saw their strange and unaccountable looks, and could not understand what I was saying that had offended them. However, it seemed to me that their anger arose higher and higher, as I continued the narrative.

As soon as I had finished the narrative, I turned upon them and said that I understood that they had never had a religious meeting in that place, and that, therefore, I had a right to take it for granted, and was compelled to take it for granted that they were an ungodly people. I pressed that home upon them, with more and more energy, with my whole heart full to burst in. I had not spoken to them in this strain of direct application, I should think, more than a quarter of an hour, when all, at once, in awful solemnity, seemed to settle down upon them, and a something flashed over the congregation, a kind of shimmering, as if there was some agitation in the atmosphere itself.

The congregation began to fall from their seats, and they fell in every direction, and cried for mercy. If I had a sword in each hand, I could not have cut them off their seats as fast as they fell. Indeed, nearly the whole congregation were either on their knees or prostrate, I should think, in less than two minutes from this first shock that fell upon them.

Everyone prayed for himself, who was able to speak at all. I, of course, was obliged to stop preaching, for they no longer paid any attention. When I went down the second time, I got an explanation of the anger manifested by the congregation.

During the introduction of my first sermon there, I learned that the place was called Sodom, but I knew it not, and that there was one pious man in the place, and they called him Lot. This was the old man that had invited me there. The people supposed I had chosen my subject, and preached to them in that manner, because they were so wicked as to be called Sodom.

This was a striking coincidence, but as far as I was concerned, it was altogether accidental. I have not been in that place for many years. A few years I was laboring in Syracuse, in the state of New York.

A two gentlemen called upon me one day. One quite an elderly man, another perhaps a man of forty-seven years of age. The younger man introduced the older one to me as Deacon White, an elder in his church, saying that he had called on me to give a hundred dollars to Oberlin College.

The older man, in his turn, introduced the younger one, saying, This is my minister, the Reverend Mr. Cross. He was converted unto your ministry. Whereupon Brother Cross said to me, Do you remember preaching at such a time in Antwerp, and in such a part of the town, in a schoolhouse in the afternoon, and that such a scene, describing it, occurred there? I said, I remember it very well, and can never forget it while I remember anything.

Well, he said, I was then but a young man, and was converted in that meeting. He has been a successful minister for many years now. Well, I wanted to relate that revival story to us, friends, as we go to a time of prayer.

I pray that God will once again visit this country with His manifest presence, and turn the church back to seek Him, to give the church repentance, to forsake their worldly ways, and the strange fire, which has become their main order of practice. And I pray that God, in His mercy, will once again send revival to awaken His bride. And I pray that He raises up young preacher boys, who have the Spirit of God upon them, like these men of former days, the Apostle Paul, Luther, Wesley, Whitfield, Knox, Edwards, Finney, Spurgeon, Moody, each shared a common denominator, a fire in their belly.

They were each so eaten up with the gospel, and thirsty for Christ, and filled with the Holy Ghost. They could not stand idly by while others perished. They saw nothing but eternity, worshiped the Holy God, and served the risen Christ, living not for earth, nor its gains, but living only for heaven and its rewards.

When they preached, they linked the devil with sin, and the cross with salvation. They preached hell and its fire, and Christ and Him crucified. Not one of them feared king, queen, or pope, and not one of them sought the compliments of man.

Let us pray.