The Great Awakening: Spiritual Revival in Colonial America | Full Movie | Brenda Schoolfield Phd.

the English civil wars were over the religious wars were over too with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 a sense of peace settled on England and her American colonies political peace and religious peace Catholicism was virtually banished dissenter or nonconformist groups like Presbyterians and Puritans were accommodated the Anglican Church the Church of England was supreme and peace reigned in the English world whether we have not in a great measure forgot our errand into the wilderness is a solemn and serious inquiry you have solemnly professed before God angels and men that the cause of your leaving your country and transporting yourselves over the vast ocean into this howling wilderness was your Liberty to walk in the faith of the gospel and your enjoyment of the pure worship of God then had the church's rest walking in the fear of the Lord while many American colonists came to America for other reasons the pilgrims like the later Puritans came for religious freedom the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621 and God was praised for his provision of life and harvest over 100 years passed and these feasts continued but the spirit of Thanksgiving grew cold the cares and concerns of a new land a newfound prosperity even the religious peace of the day led America into a deep spiritual decline New England like Old England fell into a religious sleep is dead the the Puritan zeal for building God's kingdom on earth had turned into a a zealous pursuit of earthly riches when you think of the best-seller in the 1600s being the day of doom and the bestseller in the seventeen hundreds Benjamin Franklin's way to wealth you can see that people are much more interested in worldly success than in preparing for the future is Michael wiglesworth who wrote day of doom for example would have wanted with the coming of material prosperity unfortunately almost always there's a turning away from from the Lord Israel gave powerful manifestation of that in its history by the time we get to the end of the century people are already losing a sense of the fervency that it characterized the early settlers we have a very powerful marking point in the 17th century and that is the halfway covenant the halfway covenant was a term given by critics but it didn't start out as bad as it sounds the Puritans now called Congregationalists were losing both numbers and influenced strict membership rules required a personal testimony of conversion which excluded an increasing number of people the halfway covenant allowed the children of members to enjoy partial membership in the hope that one day they would profess Christ and become full members the policy started in 1662 but by 1677 some churches were no longer bothering to distinguish between full and partial members the churches had an increasing number of people who had no profession of faith in Christ and then came the age of reason the common approach in the intellectuals of the day was always to turn to their reason and of course the mass reason if you would the rational approach by the massive men to try to find truth the Bible was slipping into the background as being the source of knowing exactly what man is in what man's capabilities Oh what did our forefathers come into this wilderness for not to gain estates but for religion in that they might leave their children in a hopeful way of being truly religious who is there left among you that saw these churches in their first glory ride worldliness drunkenness and uncleanness break in like a flood upon us and good men grow cold in their love to God and one another it has been a frequent observation that if one generation begins to decline the next fall that usually grows worse and so on till God pours out his spirit again upon them by the early 1700s with rich fertile soil and thriving businesses people prospered but while they saw the lands abundance The ministers saw spiritual Baroness so like the farmers the New England ministers began working to harvest the souls of men scattering their words like seeds [Music] when the voice of God awakes not one but thousands it may be in a day when whole villages and districts seemed as if arising and putting on new life things began taking root in New Jersey where Theodore Freeling Howsam a Dutch Reformed pastor was riding a circuit between four churches what made Freeling house indifferent was his fervent preaching that each person needed a personal conversion to faith in Christ a doctrine minimized and even lost in many churches in fact many men joined the clergy as a professional choice and not out of a sense of religious duty they had never experienced a personal conversion and so didn't preach about it but this was the key to the awakening of late there has been a greater stirring than ordinary many have been awakened to consider and enquire with a great deal of earnestness what they should do to be saved oh that the same good spirit from on high will pour out on the rest of the country stirring awakened saved these are all terms well understood at the time the Bible speaks about being dead in sin and being made alive when God grants forgiveness the idea of Resurrection being raised from the dead is also used and it's the Spirit of God who does the awakening through the Word of God the Bible believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved was the message of the Great Awakening he that believeth on Jesus Christ hath everlasting life the message was simple direct personal it cut across doctrinal and denominational differences it stirred people out of religious complacency there was something they needed to do they needed to believe on Jesus Christ as their Savior aristocrat or commoner rich or poor free or slave all needed salvation from sin all needed to be awakened from the sleep of death [Music] [Music] [Music] Neshaminy Pennsylvania it's here that the roots of the Great Awakening dug even deeper into the American soil with the building of a Seminary William Tennent a Presbyterian minister opened his home to Train ministerial students education at that time at the least involved going to Harvard or Yale of a New England and of course Tennant in Pennsylvania in those days that's quite a distance to go and for many people it meant going to Europe as well so it's simply there were kind of a practicality about it we need this school here for our people that they can get to the log College was at first an unfavorable nickname there were many who opposed this crude seminary but to William Tennent a new start was necessary because the established schools didn't require or emphasize personal conversion to faith in Christ one of the problems that the Presbyterian Church as well as the other denominations faced was a matter of an unconverted ministry Gilbert Tennant the son of William Tennent for example stirred up quite a controversy by preaching a sermon called the danger of an unconverted ministry because realizing the problem of having people in the pulpits who themselves were strangers to grace obviously those committed to the revival and to the evangelical faith saw this is a great danger whereas others who were used to good Church order as long as you have the church organized and going in its fashion and the preacher was there preaching whatever the message is well then things seemed to be covered as you might say and so there was this split there about this stress that the revival is placed upon the necessity for a regenerate pastor beloved brethren you have often heard your danger described you've had many a call by the word and Providence of God as well as by your own consciences and are you not awakened yet the heritage of the log college is enormous of course at the immediate time you had tenant training not only his sons but other young men for the ministry they would imbibe the evangelistic revival istic theology of William Tennent and went out and preached it throughout first of all Pennsylvania and the middle colonies and then further along there's also a long term heritage to the log College in a sense it broke the educational monopoly of New England no longer did you have to go up to Harvard or Yale necessarily or overseas for education but now there were other schools coming up like the Law College in fact many news schools grew out of the log college even though it closed in 1747 currents of spiritual awakening stirred in several communities providing a taste of the Great Awakening while God was so remarkably present amongst us by his Spirit there was no book so delighted in as the Bible had no place so desired as God's house Jonathan Edwards and Northampton Massachusetts what happened there will be unforgettable Edwards is referred to as the intellectual of the awakening when he was thirteen years of age he went to Yale so there was a tremendous amount of brainpower at work in the man himself Edwards was a precocious student was himself extremely gifted in the study of theology was to inform himself of the philosophies of his day it is not uncommon for the history of philosophy to refer to Edwards as one of the three greatest American philosophers who have ever been and he is regarded as the first Edwards was ordained in 1727 and assisted his grandfather Solomon Stoddard as pastor of the large and prosperous North Hampton church when Stoddard died Jonathan Edwards became the pastor Moore scholar than pastor Edwards studied 13 hours a day he was convinced that a personal conversion experience with Jesus Christ was necessary for salvation from sin not just attending church being baptized or participating in communion he said about dismantling the halfway covenant Edwards simultaneously closed and opened of the church doors he created stricter membership rules but reached out with the gospel message seeking sinners who would repent and come to God he was not flamboyant his preaching was measured reasoned and written his style could have or should have put listeners to sleep but it had the exact opposite effect the things I have observed in this town have been extraordinary God has been working much beyond his usual way almost every person in this town old and young alike are concerned about the great things of the eternal world the work of conversion is being carried on in a most astonishing manner the work in this town and some others about us has been extraordinarily universal affecting all sorts of people both good and bad high and low rich and poor everyone is concerned about salvation this present world is only of secondary importance to them the only thing in their view is to get into the kingdom of heaven I think that more than 300 souls have been saving lis brought to Christ in this town in about a half a year the best-known sermon by Jonathan Edwards his centers in her hands of an angry god preached at Enfield Connecticut at a time when the Great Awakening had already swept throughout New England Edwards came with the deliberate purpose of trying to awaken these people to their need of Christ he has images are fascinating because they show his knowledge of how to move upon the human heart and yet at the same time rhetoric never wins anybody to the Lord it has to be the Spirit of God during this time a movement developed among English college students that emphasized Bible study personal conversion to Christ and a methodical approach to Christian living known as the Methodist movement its chief founders were John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield these students met together for mutual improvement by confessing their sins to one another visiting the sick and poor avoiding amusements and luxuries sharing testimonies and singing originally part of the Anglican Church these pious men and women were labeled fanatics for their open-air preaching and evangelistic zeal of these three leaders George Whitfield would have a profound effect on the American colonies [Music] oh that I may be enabled to lift up my voice like a trumpet and to speak with a demonstration of the Spirit and with power these parts are in a dead to sleep on Thursday late in the evening the Reverend mr. Whitfield one on board at Newcastle in order to sail to Georgia after having been on shore 33 days and having travelled some hundreds of miles and preached 58 times in the provinces of New Jersey New York and Pennsylvania his congregation consisted sometimes of four sometimes of five sometimes of eight 12 15 and once at Philadelphia of 20,000 people great and visible effects followed is preaching almost wheresoever he went especially in Philadelphia there was never such a general Awakening and concern for the things of God known in America before in those days it was typical for preachers to write out their sermons and they were often long and tedious deeply theological and somewhat boring except to the well-educated but what field changed all that he spoke extemporaneously as we like to hear sermons today the people went out into the cornfields to hear him preach rich stood by the poor and slaves by farmers and all could hear and all can understand and all that believe Whitfield was dramatic and just his enthusiasm was often startling in his youth he loved the English stage and wanted to be an actor but his commitment to Christ led him to the pulpit instead as he portrayed the Apostles and other Bible characters the audience would sit with rapt attention and now you sinners what have you to object I see you were all silent and well you may for if you will not be drawn by the chord of infinite and never last love what wilt or are you if the love of Jesus Christ will not constrain you your case is desperate would anything I could do or suffer influence your hearts I think I could bear to pluck out my eyes or even to lay down my life for your sakes but such power only belongeth unto the Lord I can only invite it is his spirit that must convince you of unbelief and of the everlasting righteousness of his dear son the Standing Order Congregational churches largely were resistant to Whitfield as he continued to preach there grew what were called new life Congregational churches as they were embracing of what Whitfield was say in places like Yale and Harvard they were resistant to Whitfield so as he's coming and preaching he's he's just stirring up all kinds of controversy because he is he's not in keeping with the status quo the idea that you could have someone like George Whitfield who would come to town and preach outdoors out in the open at irregular times instead of preaching in a church on Sunday morning to some was very offensive and they wanted nothing to do with it the old light churches and other critics called Whitfield st. money trap because of his fundraising they called him doctors Quinton because he had one crossed eye he was dismissed as just a peddler of religion because of his itinerant ministry many of the established clergy felt that the Great Awakening was just some kind of emotional frenzy but when people feel great remorse for their sin and want to be forgiven by God and the man their relief is a visible and powerful experience there were some excesses connected with the awakening some people in the extremes got carried away in their zeal and some minute feared frankly for the reputation of the gospel because of these things another hand there were people who were unregenerate they had no theological sympathy they had no spiritual sympathy with what the Great Awakening was all about therefore for them this was simply excessive zealous enthusiasm and they want nothing to do it it wasn't respectable religion field preaching prevails with the vulgar here so much that industry honest labor and care for their families with many seem to be held as sinful and a mock of neglect for the salvation of their souls mr. Whitfield and his adherent ministers have infatuated the multitude with the doctrines of regeneration free grace conversion etc after their peculiar way of thinking as essential particles of salvation though in constant with true religion he is the more to be guarded against because I can assure you he is qualified to sway and to keep the affections of the multitude religion to them was something that was orderly and rational and calm and it was a religion of the head but here you get with a great awakening a religious fervour there's an emotional ISM there's an intensity people just don't like it and so churches or split denominations or split and out of that division the Lord is going to be creative and stronger groups such as the Baptist's and a few decades later even the Methodist Church yes there was a splintering and a multiplying of Protestant denominations but there was also a unifying force in the Great Awakening Whitfield claimed no one denomination and worked with anyone who preached the gospel of Jesus Christ his travels united the colonies with a common bond of experience other ministers exchanged letters journals and sermons that spread the awakening ideas printed materials could reach communities where preachers didn't go during the Great Awakening Benjamin Franklin again a publisher newspaper public I became friends with George Whitefield Benjamin Franklin and George Whitfield are two people whom you would never think of as being close friends they come from very different backgrounds in terms of philosophy they certainly had different ideas about religion and they had very different moral characters but the two men became very close friends it thinks my testimony in his favor ought to have the more weight as we had no religious connection he used sometimes in deed to pray for my conversion but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard ours was a mere civil friendship the quest that Benjamin Franklin had to make money he prints the sermons of George Whitfield because they sell Franklin isn't thinking about I'm distributing the word he's thinking about there's bucks for doing this I can make money off this but for mass audience the main way of communicating in print was the newspaper and this is used extensively historians believe that this is one way that humanly speaking the revival could be communicated and would spread from area to area because it wasn't just in one colony or one region it was in all 13 in the afternoon he preached in the fields to many hundreds of people well thus far I was prejudiced in his favor but then having heard of much opposition against him I thought it possible that he might have carried things too far when I came there I saw a great number of people consisting of Christians of all denominations and a few I believe that had no religion at all when mr. Whitfield came to the place he stood still and beckoned with his hand he then prayed most excellently all became hushed and still a solemn oh and reverence appeared in the faces of most I never saw or heard the like and I said within myself surely God is with this man [Music] [Music] although books newspapers and itinerant preachers spread the ideas of the Great Awakening it was the people themselves that were the most effective witnesses in most southern colonies the Church of England was the only legal denomination people outside the Anglican Church were called dissenters and as the great awakening took hold there were more and more of them take Samuel Morris of Virginia a bricklayer and a dissenter he began holding services in his home by simply reading aloud books by men like Martin Luther and sermons by George Whitfield I invited my neighbors to come and hear them and the plain dicin fervency of these discourses being attended with the power of the Lord many were convinced of their undone condition and constrained to seek deliverance my dwelling house at length was too small to contain two people with her upon we determined to build a meeting house merely for reading about this single means several were awakened Samuel Davies a Presbyterian arrived in 1747 as the first regular pastor of the Virginia dissenters by that time there were seven meeting houses in the group Davies was 24 years old and suffered from recurring illness but he was also well educated highly respected good with people a poet and an excellent speaker he knew that as the first permanent New Light preacher in Virginia he would face opposition from the old light Presbyterians as well as the Anglican Church leaders and he had to obtain legal permission from the government for his congregations to meet when the problems that the program ival faction had to face in the south was the fact that often the Church of England the Anglican Church was the established Church there and probably of all the Protestant churches the Anglicans were the least sympathetic to the revival in New England there were state Puritan churches Congregationalist Church if they were often Pro revival so it wasn't much of a problem so ax men like Samuel Davies came into Virginia they had to face not only the preaching to the unregenerate and the other obstacles normally plays the way of the gospel they had to face a church hierarchy supported by the state which was at least very mixed support in October 1748 besides the forum meeting houses already mentioned the people petitioned for the licensing of three more which with great difficulty was obtained among these seven I've hitherto divided my time the nearest are twelve or fifteen miles distant from each other and the extreme is about forty may the lord induce faithful ministers from New England or wherever they might be spared to come and help us Samuel Davies ministered to Native Americans and slaves anyone who needed to hear the Gospel message of salvation in Christ his largest meeting house accommodated 500 but at times services moved outdoors because of the crowds Samuel Davies was a very eloquent preacher a very talented orator in fact one of the people who heard Davie speak when he was a young man was young Patrick Henry some historians believe that when Henry during the Revolution gave his famous give me liberty or give me death speech he was actually harking back to an address given by Davies at the beginning of the French and Indian War when he Davies had tried to rouse up the colonists to the great cause and the time of danger [Music] [Music] [Music] Huebel Stearns was a New Englander impacted by Whitfield's preaching he left the Congregationalists and joined the Baptists very much a minority group at the time in 1755 he and his brother-in-law moved to Sandy Creek North Carolina you have the Great Awakening being transported from New England down to the south and that's where a man like Subal Stearns really comes into play because he he was a part of the first Great Awakening and then was used of her Lord with all of his limitations to transport the work of God to a whole new area of the country that benefited from it and the long term much more the New England did when the Great Awakening visited there when Stearns began preaching at Sandy Creek he had only a small handful of people I don't think even a dozen or in total yet within a few years the congregation of that church had grown to about 500 and keep in mind we're talking about the frontier here we're not talking about a an urban setting for 500 people that come together for a Sunday service would be rather formidable but even then that's not where the Sandy Creek awakening stopped as these people were converted they went out to other settlements along the frontier and through South Carolina North Carolina into Georgia and Virginia we had itinerant preachers of the Sandy Creek awakening going about preaching the gospel starting churches to eventually the Sandy Creek Association became one of the biggest organizations both of the Baptist and the revival in the south at that time and with that start today the Baptist denominations are the single largest Protestant group in it states the 40 years of the Great Awakening brought about changes that permanently influenced the American colonies thousands of lives were changed affecting the social and moral fabric of our society hundreds of churches were started as well as schools and colleges the Gospel message was extended to slaves and Native Americans there was greater religious freedom and diversity and at the same time a common bond of spiritual commitment perhaps one thing that impressed me personally in this Great Awakening era is God's faithfulness when his word is preached regardless of the instrument it's encouraging to realize the different people and the different types of preaching and people that God used to bring men unto him I guess if I tried to think over a spiritual lesson that came out of the Great Awakening it is above all the dependence upon God and his timing in his way it's not a matter of trying to manufacture something or get up some kind of effort rather it's a matter of prayerful dependence upon him waiting on his time and secular historians will try to explain it as the social result of this and that and the other but God speaks to hearts and he draws people to himself and he does it in his time and the second thing I take away from this is a hunger to see that same kind of revival in my own day it seems to me that now as then surely we have need of a new spiritual awakening from all history because revival is God's work after all not man's God has responded to the prayers of his people in the Old Testament book of 2nd chronicles chapter 7 God's promise is that if my people who are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and will heal their land it hath pleased the sovereign and gracious God to ordained that we should live under some peculiar advantages for our precious Souls we've lately heard glad tidings from one place and another that many are inquiring the way to Zion with their faces to the word and some are declaring what God hath done for their souls yay God hath brought this work home to our own doors we hear many crying out what must I do to be saved Oh sleeper awake [Music] you

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Length: 35min 25sec (2125 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020