through about 300 years. There really is no way to do that, to do it well. What I propose to do is spend some of our time just on a quick overview. We're going to go across the 300 years or so and talk about major things. Then we're going to zero in on three things in particular, namely New England Puritanism, The First Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening, those three things. We could spend our time profitably on lots of different topics, but we're going to zero in on them, the Puritans and Two Awakenings, First and Second Awakening. Before we start, let's take a minute and pray and ask the Lord to bless our time. Father, we thank you that we're able to meet again. Another week is gone. Actually, it's been two weeks since we were able to get together. Father, we ask for your help tonight. I pray for each of the studies, the Old Testament survey, and for the woman's Bible study, and the marriage class, Father, and also ours, the church history. Father, we pray that you would be with each teacher and strengthen each individual listener and learner, that we might listen and hear the things you would have to say to us. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, well, American church history. We're going to start with a period overview. Do you all have the outlines pretty well? The colonial era, basically we're going to divide our study tonight into two major areas. The first is the colonial era going from 1609 approximately to 1789, and then what we could call the national era from 1789 to around about 1900. We're really not going to get into the latter part of the 18th century, namely from the Civil War on to the end of the 1800s into the 19th century. We're going to cover that a little bit more next time with the whole struggle between fundamentalism and modernism and Darwinism and all that. We're going to get into that next time. So basically we're going to look up to about the Civil War and not get into all the detail that we would like to. The New World is really an amazing feature of God's providence in world history. It's very interesting when you stop and look at it. We've got North, Central, and South America. Huge land masses, pretty much unknown to the rest of the world. It almost seems as though God held back this region for this latter part of history. Of course there were Native Americans, what we call Indians. We believe they probably came across the from Asia, across the Bering Straits, and then settled down in North, Central, and South America, but we're not sure about that. However, what's remarkable is the incredible natural resources of North, Central, and South America, and the attraction that that has had to peoples from every tribe and language almost, people and nation all around the world coming here. And as a result, with all of those people emigrating to the United States, we have an incredible mosaic of spirituality, of religions. And we're seeing that more and more now, and that's leading to some of the issues that we face today. We'll talk about that more in the final session on 20th century postmodernism and tolerance and various issues. But in the early part of American history, it was a little bit more homogeneous, a little bit easier to study. For example, the first people that explored North and Central and South America were of what faith? What do you think? They were Catholic, Roman Catholic. For example, Christopher Columbus considered himself a spokesman, almost a prophet of God, that he was used by God. His name literally means Christ bearer. And he saw himself that way. He was a solid, committed Catholic. He was from Spain. And he represented Spain, and he claimed the new world for Spain, and that meant for Catholicism. Along with that were other Roman Catholic missionaries that sailed, for example, some of the French missionaries sailed up and down the Mississippi River and some of these inland areas who sought to reach out to Indians and to lead them to Christ. So there were Roman Catholics, for example, Spanish missionaries, and Franciscans, and Dominicans, and other monks that were here ministering. But we're going to really start our story with the English settlements. Basically, there were two kinds of English settlements in the New World. One is represented at Jamestown, and the other represented at Plymouth. Now, the Jamestown settlement was, for the most part, driven by economic concerns. The people were there to make a new life for themselves economically. They were going to farm. They were going to find gold, hopefully. They were going to send resources back to England. And so they settled in Jamestown, Virginia, very near us. How many of you have been to Jamestown? Seen it? They settled in a terrible place, absolutely. They settled in a swamp, and very near the ocean. It was just a bad place. Many of them died. It was borderline viable, but it continued on for a period of time and really was the first settlement of English speakers in the New World. People from New England tend to think of the Plymouth Settlement as the first one but it really wasn't because this one predated it by 11 years. Now the Plymouth Plantation up in the Massachusetts area was not intended, they did not intend to go to Massachusetts. They were hoping to go further south to Virginia near Jamestown. As they hit the northern area of North America and tried to sail further south, various storms forced them back up and they landed on Cape Cod in December. Now, you probably don't know what that means, but I grew up in that area. You don't want to land on the Cape in December. It was freezing cold, very difficult. And it began a tremendous time of struggle and suffering for them. And they lost maybe half their number that first winter. Terrible, terrible suffering. Diseases, sickness, all kinds of problems. Do we have the handouts? Any extra handouts for Jim? Okay. So they settled in there. And the pilgrims, so to speak, were separatists. They were separatists. That is different than being a Puritan. You have to understand there's a difference between Separatists and Puritans. And it had to do with the attitude toward the Anglican Church. Separatists left the church and had nothing more to do with it. They basically were an outlaw group. They were impoverished for the most part, on the run for their lives, could never find a safe place where they could worship, went to Amsterdam or to Holland, tried to survive there, didn't really want to make it work there, and then eventually came over to Plymouth. Puritans stayed in the English church, the Anglican church, and sought to work from within the Anglican church to change it. That's why they were called Puritans. They were trying to purify the church. You can see the difference. A separatist breaks off from the Anglican church. The Puritans stayed within the church. In 1630, a bunch of Puritans came over and founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Two different settlements now, one down in Plymouth and one there in the Boston area of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Of the two, the Puritans were far wealthier, far better educated, far better connected. They had a charter from the king, for example. larger, there were far more of them that came over and they really had success written all over them from the time that they settled. There were far more ships that came over and then it became a steady stream of immigrants that came over from England from that point on. So you've got the little struggling settlement down in Plymouth and the bigger, more successful, stronger settlement, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Now, I'm not going to go into New England Puritanism at this point. I'm going to go on with my overview, and we're going to dig into Puritanism in the second part of our time tonight. And same thing with the First Great Awakening. The New England Puritanism carries us right through into the time of the First Great Awakening. The First Great Awakening happened around the 1750s. The Second Great Awakening, which we're going to cover in more detail, began around 1800 and carries us up to about 1830. So we're going to get into all that in more detail. Along that time, around the time between the First Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening was the rise of deism. Does anyone know what deism is? What is deism? Mike, what is that? OK. Probably the leading spokesman for deism was Thomas Paine, who wrote Common Sense. When he wrote Common Sense, it was an anti-England kind of rabble-rousing leaflet that was spread around the colonies and unified the colonies into rebellion and revolution against the English monarchy. So he was kind of well-known for that and certainly well-accepted by patriots, at least. But after that, he started going into attacks on the Bible. For example, he wrote an article called Biblical Blasphemy, in which he's talking about various passages, for example, when Jeremiah, the prophet, says that God deceived him. Or there's another passage in which it seems that God is asking someone to go deceive somebody on earth. Who's going to deceive this guy and lure him into an attack, an ill-fated attack, etc. Thomas Paine said, this is not the God I know, and therefore the Bible isn't worth the paper it's printed on. My God is this kind of a God, and it all came from human reason, rationalism. So he rejected biblical faith and wrote in this way. John Adams and some other leaders that were theists wrote and tried to debate with him and oppose him, but he started writing in this way. And probably his two works that were most significant for this were The Rights of Man and Age of Reason. These were attacks on biblical faith. Along with him would be others such as George Washington to some degree. He was a deist, Thomas Jefferson and others. George Washington talked a great deal about providence. Well, that's another way of his talking about the natural laws that God has built into the universe the way that they run. Washington had an interesting approach to spirituality. I hope I'm not popping any bubbles here. I think we need to do more research on some of our founding fathers. Some of them were strong and committed Christians. But some of them weren't. Thomas Jefferson, probably the worst example of a deist. He's the one, as we've talked about before, who went through the New Testament and pulled out everything that was miraculous and rejected it. He was just left with a bunch of moralisms. Deism. Now, that brings us into the time of the National Era from 1789 to 1900. 1789 was the time of the ratification of the American Constitution. That's really kind of when our country began, constituted as a nation. So that's when we're starting there. Now, we're going to get into the Second Great Awakening, 1800-1830, so I'm not going to touch on it now. Along that time, there were some theological developments, what we call the New Divinity. Up to that point, for the most part, seminaries and the educating elite taught Calvinism for the most part. But at this time there started to be sort of a rebellion against that system, more of Arminian teachings focusing on human decisions, on free will. Yale University led the way in that, Nathaniel Taylor and some of the new theology that he taught. But along with this came Unitarianism and some other forms of unbelief. Harvard, we'll talk about that when we talk about New England Puritanism, but Harvard, which had been started by the Puritans and was staunchly Calvinistic in 1805, in a shocking development, went over to Unitarianism, and it's been nothing but downhill ever since. As a matter of fact, some of the members of our church who go to Duke just went up to sing at Harvard and Wellesley, and they asked my advice about, you know, maybe places to stay or different things. I said, Harvard, it's almost like going to Eastern Europe, you know, back before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's very, very difficult to minister there. All the Christian groups had been evicted off campus when I was going to school at MIT. It's amazing what happened after 1805 when Harvard went Unitarian. But they are, as you can imagine, aggressively purveying a kind of a worldly view of tolerance and liberalism and all that kind of thing. where the only ones who aren't welcome at the table are Christians. So we prayed for them and prayed that God would use their ministry up there. But in 1805, the chairman of the theology department was a Unitarian, and that started the slide of Harvard. And Unitarianism started more and more making inroads. Unitarianism started as a strong theological belief, namely that there is one God and only one God. There is not a trinity. Okay, that's what the word Unitarian means. They deny the Trinity. They believe that there is a God, but that there is no Trinity. Why? Because it makes no sense. It makes no sense to human reason. And because it makes no sense, they rejected it. This is all tied in with that whole deism, that whole way of thinking, the elevation of human reason. And that comes out of the Enlightenment, folks. And a lot of these educated people were drinking in that Enlightenment philosophy from Europe, And they were rejecting the Trinity, Unitarianism. Along with that was another group called the Universalists, who believed that Jesus' death was sufficient to atone for the sins of everyone on the face of the earth. And not only was it sufficient, but it did in fact atone for the sins of everyone on the face of the earth. Therefore, everyone on the face of the earth is going to heaven. And therefore, it doesn't really make a hoot of a difference what you believe or how you live. No hell. No hell. It's great news, I guess, if it were true, but it isn't true. And so at any rate, those two groups got together and I drive by Unitarian Universalist Church every night, every time I go home. I never see anyone there. I see a parking lot and occasionally see a car or two. I've always wondered what would motivate somebody to get up out of bed, comfortable bed, on Sunday morning and go to a UU service. I mean, what would motivate somebody to do that? But maybe they want friendship or something like that. But at any rate, they really started making inroads in American popular religion in the 19th century, Unitarian Universalism and Liberalism. Now, we're going to touch more on Liberalism and on Darwinism and Fundamentalism, Modernism next time. But that really started coming in around the time of the American Civil War. The next thing I want to touch on is Mormonism. Mormonism got its start around the time of the 1825, 1830 range with a man named Joseph Smith. Now, Joseph Smith's a fascinating guy. really an amazing, interesting guy. He lived in Pulteney, Vermont and then moved to upstate New York around Utica in that area. He made his living as a gold digger and a water finder, a diviner, a kind of guy that, you remember when you had the stick that's shaped like a Y, you can go around and bends down and you can find water and that's where they dug their wells. It wasn't such a thing as city water back then, so if you didn't have a well, You couldn't live where, you know, you needed a well. And so he rented out his services, and it was kind of a quasi-supernatural ability to find water. He was this kind of a guy, always dabbling in various things. Well, all of a sudden... Now, I'll tell you what we'll do with this. I'll give you the official Mormon story first, okay? And then we'll go and tell you what I think really happened, okay? So we'll do those two things. Let's do the official Mormon... Are we being... We're being taped, aren't we? It's all right, but this is... I mean, this is the way it is. The official Mormon story is that Joseph Smith received a visitation from the angel Moroni. And he came and told, I don't want to lampoon this, this is what he says happened. I don't know how to pronounce the word, Marana, I guess. And he told him that in the Hill Cumorah, upstate New York, in a tree trunk, there were golden plates. Actually, the first time he visited him, he didn't tell him where they were, but just that on those golden plates was a book that God wanted him to translate, okay? Book of Mormon. The problem was that he proved unfaithful. He was being tested by the angel and I won't go into the details, but he basically proved himself unfaithful and unworthy and so God waited for another year and And then the angel returned and said, now you're ready. Whatever had happened, he passed the test. And I think it probably had to do with some greed over the gold or some other issues. Meanwhile, some word got out that he was going to go get some gold plates, and they just wanted the gold. The townspeople wanted the gold. One night, he goes out on the appointed night, manages to get through this ring of townspeople that are watching his house at all times, because they figure at some night he's going to go out and get the gold plates. He makes his way to the hill where the angel had told him to go. He finds the gold plates. and takes them out and is on his way home when all of a sudden some men from the town start to attack him. Well, he knocks them down and he runs through the forest over uneven ground carrying about a hundred pounds of gold plates and manages to make it into his house. Remarkable physical feat similar to Samson picking up the gates and throwing them up the hill. Incredible achievement. Then he gets into his house, and one way or another, he is able to have the leisure. I think they figured that he had lost the plates, the townspeople left him alone. And he sits down with his cousin, Oliver Cowdery. And the way they have the thing arranged is that they're sitting on opposite sides of a table, and there's a curtain separating the two of them. Oliver Cowdery is not permitted to see the gold plates. He's not worthy. But Joseph Smith is able to read. He's been given the special ability. He's got these Urim and Thummim stones that give him the ability to read the Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphs that they're written in. That's what it was written in. I am doing this very, I have not smiled yet. I mean this is the true story, alright. Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphs. I've seen a scraping of them and this would be one of the reformed Egyptian hieroglyphs. This is another one. I think there were some, well I'll tell you where I think they came from, but at any rate. No, not that he's not an alien. We're not going to get into Mormon theology tonight. That would be a whole other thing. I'm just giving you history right now, Mormon history, what they said happened. Anyway. This is the official story I'm giving you. And these scrapings were, these are official Mormon, they put a piece of paper over them and, you know, they've got these things. It's a remarkable thing to see. It really is amazing. At any rate, he just dictated page after page of the Book of Mormon to Oliver Cowdery, who wrote it down like a secretary. And that's where the Book of Mormon came from. All right, now what is the Book of Mormon? The Book of Mormon was first published in 1830. It reads like an Old Testament history book, like First Kings or Chronicles, something like that. That's the kind of approach. And the basic premise of the story is that the American Indians are actually the lost tribes of Israel who came across on a boat after the dispersion, after they were scattered. They came across on a boat and settled in North, Central, and South America. They then had a development in which Some of them continued in the ways, the laws of Moses, and in righteous living, and they had huge culture and history and cities and an economy. But others rejected the laws of Moses and became more and more wild and caveman-ish like. And eventually they had wars and the wilder ones won and destroyed the cities of the more reformed or the more godly Israelites, wiped them out, erased the earth of them. And these were the Indians that were found when Columbus discovered America in 1492. Now, before we might ridicule that too much, Jonathan Edwards and others believed that the Indians were the lost tribes of Israel as well. This was a common view, especially in New England, at this point. This is before we understood demography and the relationship, perhaps, with the Bering Strait, and that they probably came over from there. Also, studies have been made of languages, various languages. All right, that's the official Mormon story in terms of the Book of Mormon. Now, what really happened? Well, I could spend the rest of the time on Mormonism. I don't want to do that because I want to talk about the first great awakening. But I think what really happened is in 1823, Ethan Smith published a book called View of the Hebrews. And in that book, Ethan Smith, by the way, was a congregational minister in Pulteney, Vermont. By the way, how many people do you think went to church in the Congregational Church in Pulteney, Vermont in 1823? Guess. Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Two, okay. Somewhere between. Very few people. All right, but anyway, he published this book. It was a spiritual novel, a religious novel. And the basic premise of the novel, and he didn't present it as fact, it was a novel. The basic premise of the novel was that the American Indians are actually the lost tribes of Israel. They came across on a boat and settled in North, Central, and South America, divided into two groups, one more advanced, the other more backward. The more backward ones conquered the other ones, wiped out their cities. And the whole record, this is in view of the Hebrews now, the whole record of this history is written on gold plates and hidden in a hill of reformed Egyptian hieroglyphs. That's what it says in view of the Hebrews. 1823 it was published. It went through two editions, 1823 and 1825. Book of Mormon, published in 1830, five and seven years later. It just so happens that one of the congregants in the Congregational Church in Pulteney, Vermont, was Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith's cousin. He goes to upstate New York. Now, you fill in the blanks. What do you think really happened? All right, maybe he had a copy of View of the Hebrews. Maybe they read it together. Maybe they concocted a story about Book of Mormon, and off it goes. Mormonism is a cult based on nothing but the harebrained ideas of a guy like Joseph Smith. And the Book of Mormon itself is plagiarized from a work of fiction from 1823. And put that on tape, that's the truth. I actually went to the Library of Congress to try to get the original copy of View of the Hebrews, 1823. And I went through the process of getting a card in the Library of Congress, waited for four hours, put in my request for the book, View of the Hebrews, Ethan Smith, 1823, the whole thing. Went away on it, they said it's going to take X number, four hours to get the book. Came back after four hours, and I got the book. It was brand new. The binding creaked as I opened it. And I opened it inside, it said, View of the Hebrews, Ethan Smith, with introductory and explanatory notes by Brigham Young University professor, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is not the book I want. This is their reprint with introductory and explanatory notes. Forget it. Not worth the paper it's printed on. I want the original. I went and they said, well, this is on the shelf. They said, you don't need to go anywhere. We'll go get it. They went up there, couldn't find it. It's off the shelf. And it is a federal crime to steal books out of the Library of Congress. I can tell you that right now. However, Tom Hunter got me a copy off Barnes & Noble. Remember, Xerox copy. And somebody has an original, and they have made these available. You can get them from Barnes and Noble. You can actually read the view of the Hebrews, the original. It's hard to read, but it's right there. And I told Tom this story, and it's all true, isn't it? That's the origins of the Book of Mormon, the true story. All right, Mormonism. Any questions about that at all? Isn't that fascinating? That is fascinating. I think that should end Mormonism, in my personal, humble opinion. I've been door to door. I've done evangelism, and I've talked to Mormons, and I've sent them this paper, and I haven't heard back. I don't know if they've read it or what the deal is, but I've written a paper on this, and if you guys want to know the full story about this, I've written a paper and I can get you a copy of it. Fascinating story. That's Mormonism. The rise of the missions movement, I'm not going to cover that too much at this point. Another aspect of the story at this point is the concern of American Protestants to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. This started with William Carey in 1792, who was an English Baptist. His work on an inquiry into means that Christians should take to the evangelization of the heathen, something like that, was printed in America. Adoniram Judson read it. He was an American Congregationalist, lived up in around where I used to come from, Newburyport, Massachusetts, up in that area. He was the first American missionary to foreign soil. He and his wife, Ann Haselton Judson, and Luther Rice and a number of others sailed to Burma to do mission work. They were going to stop in India and meet with Cary first. And on their way, as they're sailing across the ocean, they have nothing to do but read. And all they had to read was, what do you think? What do you think they brought to read? No, it wasn't Luther, actually. No, it wasn't Zwingli. It was even better than that. It was the Bible. Sorry, not being too tricky. Oh, it's OK. It's all right. They read the Bible. And as they were sailing, they read the Bible, and they started studying the issue of baptism. And they studied and came to the conviction that infant baptism was not found anywhere in the Bible. Congregationalists were infant or baby baptizers. And so, in good conscience, when they got there, they had to send letters back to their congregational supporters, the churches that supported them, saying, we have become Baptists. Well, when the congregational churches found that out, they cut them off. No support, financially, none. So, at that point, they had to send Luther Rice back to the United States, and he began going around to Baptist churches. Now, where did the Baptist churches come from? We'll get to that when I talk about the First Great Awakening. But they went around to all these little Baptist churches and started raising money. They started raising money. And at first they were well-received, but after a while, enough people started coming and trying to raise money for missions that they decided that they would organize into what they call the Triennial Convention of Missionaries. And every year, every three years, they would meet. 1820, 1823, 1826, 1829, 1832. They would continue to meet. This is the beginning of the Southern Baptist Convention. Baptists all around were organized for the purpose of doing missions, for the purpose of supporting financially missions. Well, meanwhile, as the mission work is continuing and God is being glorified, what is happening in the United States in the 1830s and 40s and 50s? What is the big issue? Slavery. And so the Triennial Convention kept meeting through all these times, but 1839, 1842, and the issue between Northern and Southern Baptists just kept rising and rising. It wasn't just Baptists. Presbyterians were feeling it, Methodists, everybody. It was just a national issue. Everybody was feeling it. In 1845, The Triennial Convention met, and some Baptists, I think, from Georgia were trying to push the issue, I think, at that particular moment. They wanted to have a particular missionary bring his slaves with him to one of the Indian territories to do mission work. Well, this was too much. It actually was a test case, and they were trying to force the issue at that particular moment. Northern Baptist did not accept it, and they split at that point, 1845, same year this church was founded. It's amazing, isn't it? 1845, and they split Northern Baptist and Southern Baptist. That's right, Southern Baptist. And that's where it started. Yes, sir. Same year. All right, and that's the origin of the SPC. Now, on the slavery issue, I think it's fascinating. We don't have time to go into it tonight in any great detail, but just the whole work of the abolitionists during this time. Have you ever read Tom Sawyer? Very interesting, the comments they make about the abolitionists. They were just like devils, you know, in the view. Even Jim, the runaway slave, was saying, I ain't no abolitionist devil or something like that. Very, very interesting. The abolitionists, I think, we should look to as a role model in terms of the abortion issue. Think of it this way. I mean, we almost universally recognize now that slavery, as understood then, was evil. And so therefore, the people who had, in good conscience, could not continue to allow slavery permitted anywhere, and would not rest until slavery was wiped out, continued to preach, and to agitate, and to write, and to try to get legislation passed, and try to deal with these things. And they were hated by many, and they were seen as fire breathers, and all that sort of stuff. But they kept pressing until the issue got dealt with. Nowadays, we're not allowed to say anything, are we, on the abortion issue. See what I'm talking about? And I would like to ask. I've got this question. I'm telling you, I would like to ask this question. I'd like to get on the news and ask one of these reporters that have all the answers. I'll say, listen, what would you recommend to somebody who believes in their heart that abortion is evil and wrong? Would you recommend that they keep their views to themselves or that they agitate and try to change the laws of the country? Which? And what do you think they're going to say? Keep to themselves. Now I'd ask, what would you recommend an abolitionist in 1840 who believed that slavery was wrong? What would you recommend? That they keep their views to themselves? Oh, I know, just personally that you would never get an abortion. I'm sorry, personally, you would never hold a slave yourself. But you would just allow it to continue in other parts of the country. It's a tough question. And what is the answer? You see what I'm saying? I think we have a place at the table. And I think Christians should continue to agitate on the issue of abortion until righteousness comes into this country. But the abolitionists, I think, are an example, a role model for us. Now, I'm not painting them with a wide brush. Not all of them were right theologically. And there were some excesses. But in general, I think we all agree that they were right on that issue. And I'm glad that they did what they did. Now, let's zero in a little bit more carefully on the other three focal points, namely New England Puritanism, First Great Awakening, and Second Great Awakening. That's our overview. And I can't even tell you all the things we skipped. We didn't talk about Quakers. We didn't talk about all the pietists, German pietists that came over and settled in the New York and Pennsylvania area, the Amish and all that. We didn't talk about Catholics who settled in Maryland. We didn't talk about the Jews who first had a synagogue in Rhode Island and then settled in the Cincinnati area. I mean, there's lots of things we didn't say. That's America, all right? But we did what we could. Let's look down at New England Puritanism. Now, we've already talked about the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They saw themselves as a city on a hill. Now, there's a scripture behind that, as you know. Matthew chapter 5, verse 14, Jesus said, you are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Between 1630 and 1643, 20,000 colonists arrived from England. and they settled in the Massachusetts Bay area and spread out from there. So you can see the difference between the Plymouth colony and the Massachusetts Bay colony. The Plymouth colony were just a bunch of separatists who had no connections to any other mass movement in England for the most part. So there wasn't going to be a huge flood of people coming down to Plymouth. The Puritans were connected to a huge movement in England, and so 20,000 people started flowing across to settle in what was going to be a successful colony from 1630 to 1643, 20,000 colonists. And by the way, it's interesting looking at the settlement patterns. The big difference between the English settlers and the Catholic settlers was that the English brought their women with them. That's a big difference. The French were, for the most part, monks and adventurers and trappers and all that kind of thing. They were there to make a few bucks or make some converts for Catholicism, but they were not there to settle. The English brought their wives with them. They were there to settle. They were there to live. They were there permanently. And that was really kind of the origins of the United States of America, the fact that these families were coming over and settling. So they settled up in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were highly educated. They were wealthy, comparatively speaking. They brought books with them. They had lots of books. That's where the library for Harvard College started, was the fact that these Puritans brought books with them. John Winthrop was the first governor. He ruled for 14 years. He made a covenant with God. Not he, but the Puritans made a covenant with God that they would be a city on a hill. Now, this is fascinating, absolutely fascinating. Winthrop preached a lay sermon on the Arbella, the ship that they were on traveling across. And the covenant that he mentions here is a covenant between them and God. They're going to be God's people, and God will be their God. And they're going to settle in this, the Promised Land. Fascinating. They are connecting their immigration from England and settling in the New World to what? What's the comparison? Exodus. And the Deuteronomic covenant and crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land. It's their land. They need to take it, obviously. And they did take it from the Indians. Roger Williams is going to nail him for that. They said he took land without paying for it, et cetera. He's going to nail him for that. Roger Williams, fascinating guy. But at any rate, they believed that that was their land. And they were there to take it. And it was given them as promised land. And they were going to live under a covenant. And so listen to the words of this sermon. It's called A Model of Christian Charity. This is John Winthrop. Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. If the Lord shall please to hear us and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath he ratified this covenant. But if we shall neglect the observation of these articles, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant. If we are obedient, we shall find that the God of Israel is among us when 10 of us shall be able to resist 10,000. That's biblical language. That's straight out of the book of Deuteronomy. We must consider that we shall be as a city on a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us. So they really believed that they were like ancient Israel, and that God was their God, and they're going to come and settle there. And therefore, the government was going to be a theocracy. God would rule them, you see? Amazing, a very, very interesting approach. What are the characteristics of New England Puritanism? First of all, obviously, deep piety. They believed that God was in and around and through everything. Every part of life was infused with God. They talked about providence, but not like George Washington. They talked about providence being God's providing of this or that. Everything came from Him. They were Calvinists. They believed that God was sovereign over all things. And their idea of a covenant was patterned after the Old Testament. Therefore, any troubles they had in their lives, crop failures, storms that wipe things out, Indian uprisings, were considered to be chastisements from God for covenant infidelity. You see how it worked? And who were the prophets of this covenant? Who do you think they were? Who spoke for God in reference to the covenant? The ministers did, every Sunday. They were the prophets of the covenant. Just like Jeremiah was, or Isaiah, the prophets of the covenant. And so there came a pattern of sermon called the Jeremiad, in which the preacher would get up and just basically say, you know, you're children of unfaithfulness. You've broken the covenant and God is going to judge us. And you realize, you know, that the people are, you know, they're vulnerable. They're in a howling wilderness and there are Indians around and there could be crop failures. And they took this seriously. They needed to be faithful to the covenant. They believed that individual salvation was by faith alone apart from works and that the covenant was free grace, but national survival was based on works. You see the difference? And so if they were nationally unfaithful to the covenant, God would judge them. And so when, for example, in 1675, there was the King Philip War, the Indians uprised, many settlers were killed, they considered this chastisement from God. And the preaching around that time is fascinating. Just read those sermons, and you see it's a Jeremiah. Basically, they're standing like Jeremiah saying, God has forsaken you because you've forsaken him. It's fascinating. All right, political organization. What do you think would be the relationship between church and state? Absolutely. I mean, theocracy, what are you going to get? But there were still some separations. In a daily kind of basis, the church congregation ruled itself. The state did not get involved unless it needed to. And so we had a congregational model of church government. These churches were congregational, just like we talked about later with Adonai and Judson. Congregational means that there is no higher authority, humanly speaking, over any individual congregation. They decide who they're going to hire as a minister of fire, what they're going to do with their property, if they're going to buy or sell property. And this is very different than the Anglican system, where it's just like Catholicism, top-down structure. New England Congregationalism. We, Baptists, have followed that pattern, haven't we? We are congregational in church polity, in structure. Is there any higher human authority over First Baptist Church that tells us what to do? Obviously, we're under the authority of the government, United States government. But I mean, religiously speaking, can some higher court come and tell us who to hire as a minister or whether we should have a building program or not? No, we vote ourselves. That's congregationalism. And that started up there in New England. Actually, it started in England, but it never really caught on in England the way it did in New England. All right, for the individual, again, we're talking about characteristics of New England Puritanism. Regeneration was essential for salvation, had to be born again. They believed in the regulative principle in worship. Basically, I don't know how to say it. They vowed to limit all church policy and worship practices to what could be directly based on statements or procedures found in the Bible. That's for worship now, OK? So interpretive dance, I don't think so, OK? Organs, organs out. Simplicity in worship, that's what they were looking for. Just anything you could get straight from the Bible. They sung the Psalms, that's what they sung. That was their hymn book, were the Psalms set to music. Church governor, organization was congregational, as we talked about. Their theology was Calvinistic. They had a tremendous love for learning, and that's where Harvard College came from. Founded in 1636 to train ministers, but also to educate them in the things of the world, in mathematics and philosophy. and all kinds of things, so just a tremendous love for learning. Key leaders, John Cotton, John Winthrop we've already talked about, Increase Mather. Who led in the development of the halfway covenant we'll talk about in a minute He helped end executions for witchcraft which we'll talk about in a minute Cotton Mather as well key critics and Hutchinson She was a woman who began meeting with nursing mothers who couldn't be in the service So she would take last week's printed sermon and read it to them and of course at time she began to expound on the sermon to add to it to you know add her thoughts and other things. She began to accuse the leaders of legalism, that basically the Puritans had gotten away from justification by faith alone, Lutheranism, etc. They'd gotten away from that and now they've mixed works up into the whole thing. It's called the Antinomian controversy. She was eventually expelled from the colony and went down to Rhode Island, which was the place where Basically, it was first place in the world where there was true religious freedom was Rhode Island. So she was sent down there. Eventually, she was killed in an Indian raid, sadly, she and all her children. But Dan Hutchinson. Also, Roger Williams. Roger Williams was the first Baptist spokesman in North America. He was a Baptist for, I think, about a year, and then went on to other things. But in his Baptist period, he began talking about separation of church and state. And his ideas became more and more seen to be radical. He was accused of anabaptism. He was an anabaptist, separation of church and state. How would separation of church and state play with the Puritan leaders in New England? It would undercut the whole thing. You don't have a theocracy that way. He was eventually banished, went down and started the first Baptist church in America in Providence, Rhode Island. That's also, as I mentioned, where the first synagogue was. It's just the first place of not just religious toleration, but religious freedom. What's that? Sorry, no. First Baptist, Providence, Rhode Island, first place. I don't. I'm sorry. I didn't look that up. So that would be in the, let's see. Oh, I do have it. 1633. So they outdate us by quite a bit. 200 years and more. All right. We need to move on quickly. Key developments, congregationalism. We talked about Indian missions. I couldn't find this for sure, but the seal of my home state, Massachusetts, had an Indian which said, come over and help us. Fascinating. Now, I think they have since changed that. I think 1971, they changed the state flag. Do you know what come over and help us, do you know what that refers to? The man from Macedonia. Remember the vision of the man from Macedonia saying, come over and help us. So in effect, the Indian is saying, come over and help us. What is the vision for Indian evangelization, for reaching out in missions? John Eliot translated the Bible into Algonquin language, I think. First book printed in North America was the Bible in the Algonquin language. Nobody even understands it anymore. And who is it? David Brainerd. worked among Indians at Cross Weeks near Newark, New Jersey. It looked a lot prettier back then than it does now. Have you ever been to Newark? He'd probably been in the airport there, at any rate. He was ministering to Indians there. He died of tuberculosis very young. And also tolerance. Now, what happened to New England Puritanism? They declined. Halfway Covenant came in. Basically, the idea was, what do you do with second-generation unregenerate church members? Big problem, okay? What do you do with them? Especially since you had to be a church member in order to vote. To basically be part of society, you had to be a church member. What if you don't love the Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart? What if you're not born again? What do you do? And so they didn't know. I mean, they couldn't evict them because then basically government would fall apart. That's the whole problem with intertwining church and state. So they came up with this thing called the halfway covenant. And if you basically gave a verbal assent to the historical Christian doctrines and vowed to lead an outwardly moral life, you're considered under the halfway covenant. You could then baptize your children and stay in the church and vote in elections. So it was kind of a compromise to try to keep the whole New England theocracy thing going a little bit longer. And it did last for another couple generations, but it eventually diluted the church, as you can imagine. And the Salem witch trials, you've heard about that. I have tales to tell you about Salem, but we're not going to talk about it. Salem is an evil, evil place. I mean, it's unbelievable. There are genuine witches there now. I don't know if there were back in 1692, but they're there now. I'm telling you what. Cat sacrifices. I don't know how many things you want me to go into. They claim to be genuine. They have occultic practices and seances. They speak to the dead. I tell you what, we could go on and on. Talk to me more about Salem. I'd like to tell more stories about Salem. At any rate, the Salem witch trials greatly undermined the authority of the leaders. People lost confidence after the witch trials. 20 people were executed. Realize, however, that it may seem shocking to you that 20 people were executed for being witches, but over in Europe at the time, they were executed by the thousands for being witches. So actually, there was much less going on in New England than it was in Europe. It doesn't make it right, but it did happen. And we've talked about Solomon's daughter, the one final aspect. He believed that the Lord's Supper was a regenerating ordinance. In other words, if you took the Lord's Supper, it helped convert you. Sounds a little like Catholicism to me. But that effectively undermined the halfway covenant. Now they're taking communion. They're just almost like full members at that point. Jonathan Edwards opposed his father-in-law, Solomon's daughter-in-law, eventually lost his church. He evicted from the church on that issue. He said, I will not serve the Lord's Supper to anyone who's not born again. And he lost the church over there. Now, the First Great Awakening. 1740 1745 what were the preparations? Well, first of all decline of piety Samuel Willard in 1700 talked about it. He said there is a form of godliness among us that is manifest But the great inquiry is whether there be not too much of a general denying of the power of it He's quoting scripture saying there's a form of godliness, but no power behind it. There's a structure here, but there's no true heart and That was back in 1700. Willard listed immorality, Sabbath neglect, drunkenness, small success of the gospel, few signs of genuine conversion, contempt of ministers, neglect of family devotions, growing children, poorly trained in the faith. These were the signs he showed of a decline in piety. That was in 1700, and it just continued to get worse. The precursors to the Great Awakening, there were some, Solomon Stoddard, who I already mentioned, Jonathan Edwards, and Gilbert Tennant, all saw revivals break out before the Great Awakening. But the real revival started around 1740 with the coming of George Whitefield. Now, George Whitefield is going to be one of the people we're going to concentrate on in the second half of Acts. He's going to be one of the guys. He's one of my all-time heroes. Love the guy so I'm not going to say much about him tonight, okay? He's the one that crossed the Atlantic Ocean 13 times in a sailing vessel to preach the gospel on both sides of the Atlantic he invented early forms of revivalism that we still know today. Fields preaching, for example, getting outside of the church walls and preaching to huge masses of people. Stories told of Whitefield preaching to coal miners in Wales, all right? And you could see the effects of his preaching by the tracks of the tears down the black cheeks of these coal miners. And a hard man. I'm telling you, the Welsh, tough, and he just had a power in preaching. A tremendous effect, an anointing from God. Strongly Calvinistic, extremely evangelistic in his outreaching, powerful in his preaching. Everywhere he went, it seemed that revival went as well. God just anointed him in mighty ways. There's some stories about him. For example, he had a very powerful voice and a dramatic presentation style. Benjamin Franklin, the eminent deist and scientist, thought he would measure out how far he could go before he could not hear Whitefield's voice any longer. And he measured out something like 13 city blocks He should have been listening to the sermon. Scientists, I tell you. But at any rate, he measured it out, and he could still hear. He was very dramatic. Whitfield was very dramatic in his preaching style. For example, the end of one of the sermons that I read, it moved me as I was reading it. He was talking about the end of the world, and he was talking about Judgment Day, and he was talking about an angel that was going back up to heaven and giving God the message that the final one of Christ's sheep had come to faith. It was done. And now the judgment could come. And he's calling to the angel while it goes up. Stop! Isn't there room for one more? You know, this kind of thing. And everyone's begging to be the one more. It's just effective preaching. This kind of thing. Pathetic. I mean, reaching for the pathos and the emotion. He would frequently cry while preaching. It wasn't effective. He really would feel these things. Powerful in his preaching. Strong in his doctrine, too. And he just preached in mighty ways. I'd like to read some accounts, an account or two of the awakening from his journal. Where does the time go? All right, this is from Nottingham, Wednesday, May 14th, 1740. Got to a Quaker's house which lay in our way. This is the journal right from the pen of Whitfield. waited Nottingham about midnight, May 13th, and met with a hospitable reception, preached at Nottingham both morning and evening with such demonstration of the spirit and such a wonderful movement among the hearers as few ever saw before. I was invited there by some of the inhabitants who had a good work begun amongst them some time ago by the ministry of Mr. Blair and Mrs. Tennants and Mr. Cross, the last of which had been denied the use of his pulpit by one of his own brethren and was obliged to preach out in the woods where the Lord manifested forth His glory and caused many to cry out, What shall we do to be saved? It surprised me to see such a multitude gathered together at so short a warning and in such a deserted place. I believe there were near 12,000." Now stop and think about that. This is back in 1740 in America. I mean, you had to work to get 12,000 people together. And this was in a deserted place, like in a forest. 12,000 people. I had not spoken long before I perceived numbers melting. That was one of his favorite words. People were physically like they couldn't stand anymore. They were under conviction of the Holy Spirit. As I proceeded, the influence increased till at last, both in the morning and the afternoon, thousands cried out so that they almost drowned my voice. He's preaching and they're yelling back out of passion, just out of reaction to his preaching. so that they almost drowned my voice. Never did I see a more glorious sight. Oh, what tears were shed and poured forth after the Lord Jesus! Some fainted, and when they had got a little strength and would revive, they would hear and faint again. Others cried out in manners as if they were in the sharpest agonies of death. Oh, what thoughts and words did God put into my heart! After I had finished my last discourse, I was so pierced, as it were, and overpowered with a sense of God's love, that some thought, I believe, I was about to give up the ghost. So they thought he was going to die. How sweetly did I lie at the feet of Jesus? He laid down. I mean, he was just overwhelmed by what was going on. That's Whitefield. We'll talk more about Whitefield when we get to him in the future. On the other side of the coin is Jonathan Edwards. Now, Edwards had a radically different preaching style. And he preached probably the first and most powerful revival sermon. Do you know what it's called? sinners in the hands of an angry God. Powerful sermon. I've got a copy here, which I will give to somebody if you want. All right, this is a potent sermon. I'll tell you what, I've talked to people recently about this sermon. And the thing about it is that it's true doctrinally. That's the scary part. I mean, I talk about hellfire and brimstone preaching, but the fact of the matter is it's true. The things you read in here are true. And that's what made it powerful in its time. But also realize the context. You're preaching in New England, the heritage of the theocracy, the covenant of the Jeremiah remember this is how the sermon begins therefore the text is Deuteronomy 33 32 35 it's from Deuteronomy it's in the section on the judgments in Deuteronomy do you see the potency of that It says, their foot shall slide in due time. That's his text. Their foot shall slide in due time. In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked, unbelieving Israelites who are God's visible people. Hang on, I want to tell you about his preaching style before I read it. He was very different than Whitfield. Whitfield was dramatic. His hands were up. This is Whitfield right here, with his hands up in the air, his robe flowing, his speech like this. Edwards wasn't that way at all. Edwards was nearsighted. He had these glasses. He was almost an anti-social kind of guy. Highly intelligent, one of the most brilliant men that ever lived in America. An incredible guy, but not very outgoing. He would walk around with pieces of paper pinned to his jacket. There were little theological notes, things that would occur to him. He would be muttering to himself as he's riding along. I mean, people, he was odd. He was an odd guy, but very intelligent. He got up and sat on a stool and he leaned on his hand like this and read this in a monotone. And the thing about it is that by the time he was done, people were howling for their souls. I mean, they were pleading with God that they might be saved. Why? Because of the power of what he was saying. It had nothing to do with delivery. It had to do with truth. You see what I'm getting at? And I've likened it this way. I've said there are two different analogies. Suppose you're having marital trouble, alright? And you're, let's say you're a man, and your wife's all upset, and you've had a lot of troubles, and it looks like she may leave you, whatever. You come home, the place is a mess. She's still in her bathrobe, her hair is all a mess. As soon as you walk through the door, she starts to beat on you and screams, yelling at you, I'm leaving you, I'm leaving you. Contrast that with, you come in, the place is immaculate. There are two pieces of luggage at the door. She's in her best suit, hair is all done, and she says in a monotone, I'm leaving you. The dinner's in the oven, do X, Y, and Z. Do you see the difference? Which of those two is scarier? I mean, if you love your wife. Which of the two is scarier? The second, there's no emotion, it's a done deal. It's just a done deal. And that's why it was powerful. He's just sitting there and he's saying, this is just the way it is, people. And so this is what he said. In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked, unbelieving Israelites who are God's visible people. Think about that. How did they hear that? Who are God's visible people and who lived under the means of grace, but who notwithstanding all of God's wonderful works towards them remained void of counsel, having no understanding in them. Under all the cultivations of heaven, they brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit, as in the next two verses preceding the text. The expression I've chosen for my text, their foot shall slide in due time, seems to imply the following doings related to the punishment and destruction to which these wicked Israelites were exposed. The whole time when he's saying Israelites, what are they hearing? New Englanders. You see that? that they were always exposed to destruction, as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to a fall. This implies in the manner of their destruction coming upon them being represented by their foot sliding. The same is expressed in Psalm 73, 18. Surely thou did set them in slippery places, thou cast them down into destruction. Number two, it implies that they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction. As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall in the next. Three, another thing is implied that they are liable to fall of themselves without being thrown down by the hand of another. as he that stands or walks on slippery ground needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down. Number four, that the reason why they have not fallen already and do not fall now is only that God's appointed time has not come. I'm telling you what, you read that and you get done and I'm telling you, it moves you and you're saying, wow, this is powerful and this is his doctrine. The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this, there is nothing that keeps wicked men any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God. By the mere pleasure of God, I mean His sovereign pleasure, His arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty, any more than if nothing else but God's mere will had in the least degree, or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the preservation of wicked men, even one moment. Yeah? I've heard that, uh, I've heard that, uh, you know, that, uh, during the, the sermon, that the people's feet were warm, or got warm, and they were holding on to the back of the feet, in front of them, afraid that The reason for that is that he uses an image later on of walking across a rotting plank over the mouth of hell. And people were just, I mean, the imagery is potent. And people are like, wow, you know, it's not going to hold me up. And it was effective. And many, many people were brought to repentance as a result. And what I'm saying is the power of the sermon is the truth. It's the truth. It's not the tone of voice. It's not the gestures. It's, is it true or not? And if you say, no, it's not true, then what is it that keeps wicked people out of hell? It was, it was the conviction of God. And Edwards wrote another sermon in which his thesis was, it is the manner of God before he brings a signal mercy on a people, first to prepare them for it. In other words, he gets you ready before you listen to this sermon. And by the time you get done, you repent and you come to trust in Christ. It's the grace of God. That's it. Now, Second Great Awakening, we don't really have time, but I want to tell you a couple of things about the Second Great Awakening. First of all, it was an amazing outpouring of emotion and of... There it is. Revival fires, but it was different than the first great awakening very different started out in Kentucky, Kentucky ablaze 1801 and just spread through North Central North and South Carolina Central and Southern, Virginia In some of these rural areas, 20,000 people would gather at one camp meeting. Amazing. Huge crowds of people. A different style, though, than the preaching. Simple, lively, persuasive preaching. Common folk turning to evangelical faith and giving vent to untamed emotions. I mean, they went wild. They really did. Here's pictures of these awakenings. Can you see that? People fainting. People screaming. Let's pass that around. No, no, no. It was after that. We don't do that in Louisville. Denominations cooperated, the Baptists, the Methodists, the Presbyterians worked together in these revivals, and they all reaped the benefits. They all grew tremendously as a result of them. The biggest difference between the First and Second Great Awakening came in the teachings of a guy named Charles G. Finney, Charles Grandison Finney. Finney taught some amazing things about revival. We're going to close with this. 1825 to 1830, he led a series of revivals in upstate New York. 1825 to 1830 in upstate New York? Does that ring a bell? Who's up there in upstate New York in 1825 to 1830? Joseph Smith he should have gone to finish revival anyway basic concepts listen religion is a work of man a Revival is not a miracle stop and think about that. That is profound. I It's profoundly wrong, I think, but it's profound. A revival is not a miracle. Well, if it's not a miracle, what is it? It's a science. You have to figure out how to lead people to revival. Basic concept, all right? This is what he says. It is a purely scientific result of the right use of the constituted means. Get the music right, you get the preaching right, you get the advertising ahead of time right, you have the walk down the aisle done right, you have the music lilting in just the right way, you can get the people to come left and right. they'll be weeping all over the altar yes but will they be born again now that's a question okay they'll be weeping all over the altar but will they be born again revival is brothers and sisters a miracle or it's not a revival right but that's it's a whole science toward revivalism and we still see some of those flavors even in our Sunday morning worship service it's true There's still aspects of it in evangelical services today, namely the altar call, for example. That came in with Finney. It did not exist before Finney. He had something called the anxious bench. And if you were feeling conviction, you would go sit up front and pray. And people would come around you and start praying with you. It was Finney that invented that. Fascinating. And that's where we get walking the aisle. And that's why, you know, people have come up to me after sermons and grieved with me that nobody walked the aisle. And I said, listen, Romans chapter four, Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. That's how you get saved. It doesn't have to do with walking the aisle. It has to do with you believe a message that's preached and you get saved. Praise God. And by the way, I'm not going to say that. Anyway. New measures, protracted nightly meetings, exhortations by lay speakers, anxious bench, which we just talked about, the use of publicity to ensure large crowds, a speaking style that was tough, convicting, direct, and popular, unmistakably based on the free will of the hearer, invented the invitation system still used today, used long choruses, and the coming forward to show a display of public piety. And that came in with the second great awakening. Any questions? We've gone fast tonight. I want to say to any of you who are in the evangelism training class with us on Sunday afternoon, we need your help for our Saturday health fair. And if any of you are interested in being witnesses for the Lord and coming and helping us on Saturday, we need you. We're going to have, hopefully, lots of people coming here. So we need your help. If you can come here any time during Saturday, we could use you for giving out Bibles and just talking to people about the Lord. All right, that's it. We're done.