Chapter 10 - Talking About Some Revolutions

Book Outline (pg 105):




  1. Social Revolution
    1. In the 1600s and 1700s there were a series of revolutions which shape our modern world.
      1. Puritans found new societies in the Americas
      2. Pietists revitalize the church emphasizing experience
      3. Rationalists change the accepted popular concept of the Divine
    2. Puritans and Pilgrims
      1. The original settlers had no interest in forming a society where everyone could worship freely.
        1. They were escaping religious persecution in England
      2. They wanted to form a society based on their own beliefs (Calvinism)
        1. Only people who professed Christ as Lord could be voting citizens
        2. Government and church still seen as integrally connected
    3. Providential Experiment
      1. Roger Williams
        1. Challenged the colony’s alliance with the church
          1. Believed civil judges should not enforce religious beliefs
            1. the Puritans disagreed with this viewpoint
          2. Preached ‘the Natives are the true owners of the land’
            1. This was the real point of contention
        2. Massachusetts banished Rogers in 1635
        3. Purchased a small bay south of Massachusetts from Native Americans
          1. Providence
        4. Providence’s Charter
          1. Every faith was welcome in Providence
          2. “No person within said colony shall be called in question for any opinion in matters of religion. Persons may enjoy their own judgments in matters of religious concernment
        5. Became a Baptist. Founded the first Baptist church in the Colonies. Left the Baptist denomination. – all within a year.
      2. Anne Hutchinson
        1. Wednesday night Bible study and sermon discussion group in her home.
          1. over 60 people on a regular basis
        2. Said: Christians aren’t bound to obey any human laws (Rom 3:24-28)
          1. left out obedience to civil authorities (Rom 13:1-7, James 2:14)
        3. Trial over promotion of treasonous ideas
          1. She knew more than her judges about the Bible
          2. Women weren’t supposed to teach Scripture
          3. No one could prove the charges against her.
          4. She appealed to a personal supernatural experience
            1. “How did you know that it was God that did reveal these things?”
              ”How did Abraham know that it was God that did bid him offer his son?”
              ”By an immediate voice”
              ”So to me, by immediate revelation”
          5. Court banishes Anne. She flees to Providence (Rhode Island)
      3. The idea of a civil government refusing to favor any religious faith transformed the colonies, and later the world.
    4. Reclaiming the Colony
      1. Problems of changing ideologies
        1. many of the second generation settlers were not Christians
        2. How can Christian principles govern a society if not everyone believes in them?
        3. People (rightly so) see the work of the Demonic in their children’s refusal of the faith
      2. Salem Witch Trials (1692)
        1. Several young girls fell violently ill
          1. delirium, hallucinations, violent convulsions, incomprehensible speech, trance-like states, odd skin sensations
        2. Many others felt similar things.
        3. Mass hysteria
        4. People accused of being witches
          1. Witch hunts were nothing new.
          2. They’d been around in Europe for a long time
        5. About 60 were accused.
          1. 50 confessed, repented and were freed
          2. 19 refused and were hanged
        6. Ergot—rye fungus, has component of LSD 
          1. An interesting and un-provable theory.
          2. Some think the Rye crop (the major crop at the time) had a fungus which caused the original problems and fueled the mass hysteria
          3. It would explain why so many people confessed to having felt strange things.
          4. According to the journals of the villagers, almost all the accusers were from the part of town were the conditions would have been ripe for a fungal outbreak based on the weather descriptions
          5. The next growing season was dry and would have explained the abrupt ending of the trials.
        7. Afterwards, people were ashamed of their actions and (I think) withdrew from anything having to do with religious zeal.
  2. Revolution in Human Reason
    1. Lenses of Experience and Assumptions
      1. We all see the same event but attach different meanings to it.
      2. Many read the same Bible verses but come to different conclusions about the meanings.
        1. different assumptions and experiences lead to different understandings
      3. Lens of church tradition—pre-Reformation
      4. Lens of Reason (the Enlightenment)
        1. Many Reformers discarded church tradition
        2. Primary understanding of the world shifted to reason
    2. The Universe—From Cosmic Puzzle to Reasonable Machine
      1. Isaac Newton
        1. proved gravity could explain the mystery of the planets movements
        2. Science had taken a mystery centuries old and provided a simple explanation
    3. God—From Personal Savior to Distant Creator
      1. The universe is like a giant machine running on natural laws.
        1. Once we find the rules, we will be able to describe how it works.
      2. Divine creator akin to clock-maker
        1. God created the universe with unvarying natural laws
        2. Let it go and never interfered again.
      3. Deism
        1. If human reason can explain the world around us, we no longer need God
        2. Rejection of every belief unable to be proven either by reason or scientific experiment.
        3. Creation was the first and last act of God
        4. Being a Christian meant following Christ’s moral example
        5. Became the religion of the educated and of science
  3. Religious Revolution
    1. Revival in the Colonies—The Northampton Awakening (Jonathan Edwards)
      1. Extraordinary intellect
        1. learned Greek and Hebrew by 13
      2. Not the best preacher ever.
      3. President of Princeton University
      4. The Great Awakening (1734)
        1. The conviction of the Holy Spirit falls on a normal church service and people come to Jesus.
        2. Lasts for 3 years.
        3. Many manifestations of the Holy Spirit
          1. people healed of sickness
            1. no one was sick in the entire town for several weeks (we’re even talking the nursing home)
          2. people would lose strength and fall to the floor
          3. visions and dreams
          4. spiritual ecstasies
        4. Critics said it was emotionalism
        5. Edwards almost ignored the outward signs. He believed the evidence of a changed life was the long-term fruit in a Christian’s life
    2. Revival in Europe—Pietism
      1. Late 1600s, Christianity in Europe and in America was in a sorry state (Name only)
      2. Pietism
        1. began with a booklet Pious Desires by Jacob Spener
        2. urged Christians to pursue a personal relationship with Jesus through meditation on the Bible
      3. Moravians (1722)
        1. Count Nikolaus Zizendorf
          1. Pietist
          2. Wealthy land owner in Germany
        2. Moravian (Bohemian) protestants take refuge on his land from Catholic persecution
          1. Community is called ‘Herrnhut’ – or ‘the Lord’s watch’
          2. Community quickly grows to around 300 people.
        3. Passion for prayer (1727)
          1. The Holy Spirit falls on the community and several have a vision for round-the-clock prayer. 
          2. 24/7 prayer for over 100 years
          3. “The sacred fire was never permitted o go out on the altar (Lev 6:13), so, the intercession of the saints should incessantly rise up to God”
          4. “I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem;
            they will never be silent day or night.
            You who call on the Lord,
            give yourselves no rest,
            and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem
            and makes her the praise of the earth” (Isaiah 62:6,7).
        4. Passion for Missions
          1. Zizendorf travels to Denmark and meets Eskimos and an African slave who had been led to Christ by a Lutheran missionary (1731)
          2. Zizendorf calls the Moravion community to missons.
          3. The small community sent out close to 300 missionaries around the world in 40 years
          4. Some even sold themselves into slavery in order to reach the lost.
      4. John Wesley
        1. 1736, Wesley was an Anglican priest sailing to the Georgian colony to preach to Native Americans
          1. the ship ran into a storm
          2. most were in terror
          3. Moravians calmly sang hymns and songs
          4. Wesley was impressed
        2. Wesley spent two seemingly fruitless years in America
          1. “I went to America to convert the Indians but, oh, who shall convert me?”
        3. His conversion experience
          1. Heard someone teaching on Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans
          2. “About a quarter before nine, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me.”
        4. Methodists
          1. Wesley urged people to seek God by these methods:
          2. Meditation on Scripture
          3. Fasting
          4. Frequent taking of the Lord’s supper
      5. George Whitefield
        1. Recruited by Charles Wesley (John’s brother)
        2. Friend of the Wesley brothers from Oxford University
        3. Methodist preacher in the American colonies
        4. 8 out of every 10 colonists had heard Whitefield preach. (estimated to be about 6 million)
        5. Thousands of people came to Christ under his preaching.
        6. Whitefield and Wesley split for several years over predestination
          1. Whitefield—Calvinist
          2. Wesley—Arminian
          3. The ended up agreeing to disagree
        7. Prepared the way for John Wesley’s preaching tour 
        8. Came back to Britain and brought the revival with him—particularly to John Wesley
      6. John Wesley’s preaching tours and the power of God
        1. Wesley writes that often over 20,000 would attend his outdoor meetings
        2. People climbed trees to see him better. He would often request they come down. During his preaching, the presence of God would manifest in such a way that people would lose control of their muscles. Those in the trees would fall to the ground all around the field.
        3. Dramatic stories of healings.
        4. 1,000s came to know Christ
        5. People would laugh and cry and shout during the meeting
        6. Prayer: He would pray for days before going to a new city. Those in the prayer room would leave because they couldn’t stand the way God’s glory was manifest in the room. One account tells of a man who heard this and made a commitment he was going to stay the whole time. As the prayer meeting began, people prayed their prayers and nothing was unusual. Then Wesley began to pray. As he wept for the lost, the room became heavy with the glory of God. It became hard to breathe. People felt as if they were being crushed by God’s nearness. One-by-one people left as Wesley continued in prayer. At last, the man could stand it no more, thinking that if he stayed any longer he would die.
      7. Revival continued in the colonies until the 1750’s
        1. Then the struggle for independence began.
  4. Political Revolution
    1. Revolution in the Churches, Churches in the Revolution
      1. Religious rhetoric pervaded every stage of the colonial struggle for independence
        1. John Wesley opposed the independence movement
        2. Anglicans, Mennonites, and Quakers also refused to support the movement.
          1. side note: Pennsylvania was founded in 1682 by William Penn as a safe place for Quakers who were being persecuted in England.
        3. Those who did not support the war often lost property and were threatened. Several were killed.
      2. American pastors often preached independence from the pulpits: ignoring the Gospel.
        1. Exchanging revival for revolution
    2. Deism in the founding fathers
      1. Many of the founding fathers were Deists, not Christians
        1. remember, this was the accepted view of religion for the educated
      2. Thomas Jefferson 
        1. cut out every reference to the supernatural or miraculous in his Bible
        2. called Jesus’ miracles, “Vulgar ignorance…and fabrications”
      3. Benjamin Franklin
        1. I have some doubts as to [Jesus’] divinity…and think it needless to busy myself with it”
    3. Ending the marriage between church and state.
      1. Bill of Rights, third article: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”
      2. The loose coalition of the colonies could not pick one of the brands of Christianity without alienating the rest.
      3. It chose to support none of them, and promised to support none of them to the detriment of the others.
        1. The U.S. Government would not support one of the interpretations (brands/sects/denominations) of Christianity above the others.
        2. England—supported the Anglican church and barely tolerated everything else.
        3. France—supported Catholicism and didn’t tolerate anything else until the French Revolution. Then it didn’t tolerate any religion at all.
  5. What is Truth?
    1. During the 18th century, the old ideas about truth and the nature of the world were unraveling.
    2. They placed their trust in human reason.
    3. Because they could not explain the existence of the world without a creator God, they were Deists (they believed in a deity)
    4. Amidst the cultural shift away from Christianity into the arms of science, one of the greatest outpourings of the Holy Spirit ever occurred—the Great Awakening.