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2:10I might have a little excerpt from Lawson next time. And Lawson's written a book as well, but his book on Whitfield I found to be very, very helpful. His book on Edwards just narrowed in on Edwards's personal resolutions. He had 70 of them that he would review on a regular basis. And I think most of us, that would be a bit much. But anyway, those are just two works I would highly recommend. Okay, so The Great Awakening. Where are we going to define it as? Well, it's defined in a lot of different ways. And I see I'm going to have to be looking over here because my eyes are so bad, even with my glasses, I can't read them on PowerPoint there. But basically, it's a series of revivals that actually. In truth, the more I stay this, I realize it wasn't just an American phenomenon. It was simultaneously occurring in England.

3:09A little bit different over there, some different personalities involved, but some of the personalities in both places were the same person. And the big number one there is George Whitfield, which is spelled Whitefield, but it's pronounced Whitfield, and don't ask me why. I never have figured that out. But anyway, it's a series of religious revivals beginning in 1734. Well, that's what some say. You're going to see there's some early hearkenings of this as early as 1719. And it affected thousands of colonists in all 13 colonies. The South tended to lag behind the North, and yet the South is probably the most affected by the Great Awakening. And I'll show you a map at the end of the series that will very graphically illustrate why that is so. In fact, many, many, in many, many ways, I would say the greatest impact of the Great Awakening in the long run, in the aftermath, was with the Baptists.

4:18So many of the early Baptists were simply Puritans who I could jokingly say finally saw the light. Okay? And but I will explain how that happened. It's really kind of a remarkable story. And in fact, two of the greatest, I guess you could say, missionaries for Baptists who came south and brought about the conversion of, you know, just vast majority of southerners are Baptists to this day. And that came about from two Yankees, former Puritans, Congregationalists, who then became separate separatists, you know, from the established Congregationalist Church. And then the issue always was baptism. They began to realize that infant baptism was just not biblical. And so they converted, went all the way to becoming Baptists. But I'm getting way ahead of myself here. So, anyway, it is also some notice that it seems to be a reaction to a general decline in religion that had been occurring. And by decline in religion, I'm talking more about organized, established religion. And we need to explain that. What a lot of Americans don't realize is during the colonial period, you have what you call established churches. And these are state-supported churches. And they were legally the churches they want you to go to. But, of course, many Americans came to America to get away from established churches. And so that's a tension. From the very word go. And so let's get into some of this.

6:06A lot of scholars ask why the Great Awakening occurred. And of course, I would say because it was the Lord's will. But there are certainly some influences that I think the Lord used to sort of plow the ground and prepare it for the coming of the Great Awakening. And so let's take a look at some of these. One, it was noted by the 1700s that there was indeed a decline in church attendance throughout all the colonies, especially the established churches. They were especially having problems. And a lot of the pastors, it's going to turn out, one of the problems was that the pastors themselves weren't saved. The word they used for regenerate. They had not actually had conversion experience. And that was considered to be okay. You know, if you were, after all, you've got to remember, all these established churches, whether they be Congregationalists or Anglican, you're baptized as an infant.

7:06And so a lot of these folks grow up, and they never do actually have a personal relationship conversion experience with Jesus Christ, but they think it is fine for them because they think they're good, they're living a moral life. I'll become a pastor. It's a pretty good life, pretty good pay. And so you have quite a few that are in that boat there. And this obviously is going to be noticeable. Because you've got to remember the first generation, particularly up in New England, that came over, most of those guys were regenerate. They had accepted Christ. And in fact, they were risking their lives by adhering to their, you know, their separateness. That gets them in trouble back in England. And they were willing to take the very risky voyage to America. You've got to remember, a lot of ships never made it over here. They sank in storms, and it was a dangerous thing to come to America. You know, it's not quite as bad as jumping on a spaceship to go to the moon, but it was pretty bad.

8:10And so these guys, the first generation, were really sincere in their profession of Christ. The problem comes after several generations, right? Second generation, most of those were too. But it always seems like that third, fourth generation, things start going wrong. And of course, in New England, the problem was you had these children, some cases grandchildren, who are now adults, and they're coming to church, and they've never made a profession of faith, but they were baptized as members when they were babies. However, they weren't allowed to partake in the Lord's Supper because they had not made this public profession. Can you see the tension there? And so the question was: what are we going to do about these? Non-regenerate church members who are now having children as well. Should we baptize the children of these who are non-regenerate? They were baptized, but they still haven't become fully, I guess you could say, participation members in that. They have had a conversion experience. So what about their children? Well, this led to a huge crisis in New England. And along with this, too, is the problem that there's politics involved here. Remember, there was no separation of church and state in Massachusetts or most of the New England colonies. The Puritans, who, once they left England, came to America, they were Anglicans until they stepped foot on shore, and then they officially decided to break with the Church of England and they become known as the Congregationalist Church, which pretty much doesn't exist today, and you'll see why before we're done here. But that group of people, when they come over, you know, they were very sincere, and they almost all of them made professions of faith. Now, several generations later, this is not the case. Now, there's so much to say about the Puritans. Let me just simply say this. In one odd way, I would say they were victims of their own success.

10:30Because the original group that came over to America, if you know anything about the New England colonies, almost from the word go, they were super successful economically, which really is astonishing considering the soil in New England. The joke in New England: every spring the number one crop is rocks, highly glaciated soil. And yet, they had these amazing little truck gardens that they formed, and they raise horses, cows, pigs, they exported that, and then they get almost immediately involved in whaling, which was incredibly lucrative. And just right up north of there, you got the Grand Banks, where when the first fishermen let down their nets, the fishing boats almost turned over from the weight of the fish. And so, you have the codfish. You know, you go to the general court in Massachusetts to this day, they have this giant model of a wooden codfish hanging from the ceiling. Kind of odd in the legislature to have that, but it was so much a basis of their wealth. Very, very successful. And so, that wealth, you know, there's something about money and spirituality. I'm not saying you can't be spiritual with money, but it does seem to sometimes the money becomes more attractive and starts leading people, enticing people away. That was a problem. But more than that, you see, the Puritans came to America. America to worship the way they thought you should worship God. But when others start coming over and they have differing ideas, they were not willing to let them worship the way they believed they should worship, particularly if you're a Baptist, by the way.

12:14In fact, you know, Massachusetts Bay famously hanged some Quakers who came to Massachusetts Bay as Quaker missionaries to the Puritans. Kind of dark humor here, but the Quakers thought the Puritans needed to be saved. And the Puritans didn't appreciate their attention, and so they literally hanged them, one of them being a woman. It was pretty incredible. And since the Congregationalist Church was the established church in New England, you had to pay a tax to support the preacher, which is fine if you're a Congregationalist. But guess what happens? Due to the wealth of the colony, New England became a magnet for people from all over England and the British Empire who came there not to worship the way the Puritans worship, but to make a buck.

13:07And so the Puritans become a minority within their own colony over time. See, that's a big, big problem. And that is another reason why, going full circle back to this membership issue, unregenerate members and Lord's table and all this, there was a political issue. You see, the Puritans. Maintain control because only if you are a member of the Puritan church, a regenerate member, could you vote? And so this was becoming an issue because initially New England was very democratic. The original settlers that came across were all regenerate. They could all vote. But guess what's happening? Their children can't vote because they hadn't had a conversion experience. And all these thousands of other people who are arriving because they just want to get in on the economic success of the colony, they don't want to be Puritans, but they're being disenfranchised. Now, back in England, if you're an Englishman, you have certain rights, right? One of those rights is to vote. And so, ironically, in America, they weren't having their full rights as Englishmen. This is becoming a political issue. So, the Puritans come up with this idea called the Halfway Covenant. 1662 is a peg date, you want to know where we're at. And now, I don't want to get into the full implications theologically about the halfway covenant, but I would throw this one out to you. How can you be halfway saved?

14:49You see the problem they were dealing with? Okay. But politically, it was a huge success because the Puritans who want to maintain control over the Colony, when you allow members who are not regenerate, but they're members of the church through baptism, they're not allowed to take the Lord's Supper taken over, so they're not full members, but they can, you know, they were baptized as a child. They now can vote. And by the way, they're children. And basically, if you're a descendant of a Puritan, you can vote. If you're not, you can't. See how that worked politically? And is an attempt to maintain control. But it greatly divided the church because the sincere believers recognize that this is a compromise. You know, to be a full member, you should be regenerate. You should have an experience with the Lord. And so this was a big, big tension going on in the background there. Now, on top of that, you've got to remember back in England, what's the established church? It's not the Congregationalists. Yeah, it is the Anglican Church.

16:01Brother Cooper was talking about this this morning. Church of England, same thing, Anglican church. And the Anglican Church was the established church in most of the colonies. Not New England, though. And the Anglican Church, remember, a lot of people disagreed with the Anglican church, most notably the Puritans and Separatists of all sorts, dissenters. As they would be called, and a lot of those folks come to America to get away from the Anglican Church. Now that the 13 colonies were going really well, were becoming economically successful, guess what? The Anglican Church, which, who's the head of the Anglican Church, Cooper?

16:55Well, it's whoever the king is or the queen is, right? And they decide now, all these folks that tried to get away from the Anglican church, we're going to try to force them back in now in the colonies. And so they formed an organization, which textbooks don't talk much about anymore, but it's called the SPG, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which meant about the opposite of that, by the way. But anyway, what it was really all about is trying to force you to be back in the Anglican church again. And so this was a missionary organization that sent Anglican missionaries to try to persuade you to come back in the Anglican church. And oh, by the way, you, the taxpayer, have to pay these guys. Now, how would you like to pay a person, a pastor or a missionary, to try to convert your children into a religion that you disagree with? You see that tension? That was going on. Also, and then, of course, which is number three, I just Cover that. You have growing opposition to a lot of these unregenerate pastors, the sort of coal theology that was being put forth. And there's a problem that, you know, we take it for granted today that we have freedom of speech, right? Well, you didn't really have that in colonial times, particularly if you wish to preach, let's say you're a Baptist. Quite often in New England, if you try to preach a Baptist message, which, by the way, is a Bible message, you could be arrested and you could be horse whipped. In fact, one of the books I'm planning to recommend, which is on the Baptist, it has a horse whip on the cover, and that's why. And you could be imprisoned. And quite a few were. The first Baptist churches in New England, almost all those guys, they either, and here's why, they would refuse to pay the tax. Okay? In case you didn't know it, one of the things that led to disestablishment of the established churches was the Baptists later on working with people like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, you know, because they were always against paying taxes to support a clergy. And so that's a tension that's going on. And then number five up there, I've already made reference to it, but I like to put it this way: the Puritans were becoming Yankees.

19:36Now, I'm an old southern boy, and that word Yankee has a connotation to me that I cannot get across to moderns who just do not understand the depths of that word. But it's not good if you're a southerner, okay? And the implication was not just that they're from up north. The implication was: if you come to a business deal, you better be careful because they are going to try to cheat you in a business deal. Money, money, money, I want more of it. I don't care how I go about to get it. Okay? That was the stereotype, which in many cases was not fair, but in some cases it was.

20:17They had that dubious reputation. And the trouble with that totally goes against Scripture. You know, the original Puritan idea was God will prosper you. But you know what the Puritans meant when they said prosperity? Now, there was a bit in there about physical prosperity, but what they're referring to mainly is spiritual prosperity, that you're going to grow in Christ. And by the way, the Puritans were nothing like some of these modern, you know, what I call prosperity gospel preachers. Put your hand on the screen, feel the power, you know, become a Christian and get Cadillac. Right? That's not what we're talking about. With the Puritans, it was, you know, if God prospers you materially, you take that to go help missionaries, you take that to go print gospel tracts, you use your wealth to further the gospel. An ostentatious, you know, show of wealth was kind of looked down upon, you know, and, you know, so, but now with the Yankees, they were doing all of that. You know, and so that was a big tension. And, of course, even some of these Yankees having acquired this wealth, thinking that, you know, that was going to bring them self-fulfillment and self-satisfaction. You and I know what?

21:47There's this emptiness, this spiritual void. Many of them recognize that something was missing. And this seems to have permeated the New England area. And I think that's one reason why when the Great Awakening comes, it comes with such fury. Now, the Great Awakening, let me just very briefly say this. It is so shocking to the New Englanders when it hits because it is very emotional. I mean, Edwards, when it hits with Edwards Church, probably no one's more surprised than Edwards himself. I mean, these are Puritans.

22:31They are the origin, or I should say the origin of this phrase. I don't know if you heard this before. God's frozen chosen. Okay? I mean, they're supposed to sit in that chair bolt straight and not show any emotion. Right? And let me tell you, there was a lot of emotion in the, you know, this, and it's very shocking to the Puritans when this happened. And, of course, along with this, there comes, you know, Satan, anytime there's a genuine revival, you can just bet that Satan's going to be there waiting to bring in his counterfeits and to try to, you know, bring about things to bring about confusion. And you have that in the aftermath of the Great Awakening as well. And in fact, some of these unregenerate pastors were using events like this to try to shut it down. They want everything to go back the way it was, nice and dull and boring, and nothing's happening, and people are not coming into a relationship with Christ. So, now, there's other problems. Remember, these are colonies. And in the frontier areas, there were practical problems with doing a church. But there's also the very real danger of death constantly on the frontier, particularly from Indian attacks. And As I was reading Marson's book, it kind of reminded me, I kind of forgotten just how bad things were.

24:07Edwards' grandfather, who Solomon Stoddart, one of the just incredible Puritan preachers, and Edwards, we're going to see will take over that church, which is the second largest church in Massachusetts. But it's sort of middlewest part of Massachusetts. It's just way over there, though. And Stoddard had to have a palisade around his house for Indian attacks. You know, is that danger so real? And the real boogeyman for almost all New Englanders was this example here: Deerfield, 1704. You have Indians attacked this little town, about 40 houses, 300-so people. And they're led by 50 Frenchmen who just stand aside and let the Indians just rampage is horrible. Little babies were brutally killed, and I won't describe the methods that they did. It's just horrible that these children, men, women, children, and over 100 of them were taken captive to Canada. Only about 60 of them ever made it back. And the lurid stories of what happened at Deerfield was just constantly on the minds of people throughout New England during the Columbia. Period and right through the Great Awakening. In fact, Edwards dies in the midst of the French and Indian War, you know, was raging. So that definitely must have weighed on people's minds as well. But then getting back to the frontier, and notice how many wars, six different wars from 1675, 1763. French are finally kicked out in 1763, and that kind of brings an end to most of the Indian warfare, although, you know, it was an issue during the Revolutionary War as well. It's almost a third war during the Revolution War, which I don't have time to go into, but with just the Indians, north and south, Iroquois up north and the Cherokee down south. So anyway, that was the issue. And then there's another issue, though, on the frontier. Probably getting ahead of myself here, and that is, how do you do a church in the frontier? Remember, the frontier, well, you don't remember because you hadn't had the lecture yet, but the frontier is the most diverse religiously of all areas of colonial America.

26:32You got everything you can imagine, you know, from Anglicans to Presbyterians to Baptists to just some denominations don't even exist today, right? And so if you get a group enough to build a church building, what's the next problem? What denomination is it going to be? So here's what they do. It's kind of smart in a way. They would say, okay, let's get folks, you know. People live miles away. In fact, you did not see your neighbor. Anyone live in that situation? Anybody lives here today that you cannot see your neighbor?

27:11One, two, three, four, five. And just recently. Okay. It's a rare thing now. When I was a kid, that was a story. You know, I was born and raised on farm, couldn't see our neighbor. But back then, your neighbor, you not only could not see them, but they might be miles away. So, church, you've got to go through. In some cases, there's no roads. Go to church. So, okay, let's build a church, but we're not going to say what religion it's going to be. So, everybody has a hope that's going to be their religion. So, then they build the church, then they all gather inside the rudely constructed building to vote on what denomination it's going to be. Yeah.

27:58That's where the fireworks start, right? And so, guess what they wind up doing? They decide to share the building. It's going to be Methodist this Sunday. It's going to be Presbyterian this Sunday. It's going to be Anglican this Sunday, but Catholics are not allowed. All right. All right. So, most of the colonial frontier America, that'd be the way it would be. But then you got another problem. Guess what the next problem is? Free shirts. Where are you going to get a preacher? Especially a preacher only gets to preach one time in two months. How are you going to pay that preacher? And so that led to circuit riders. All right? And in other words, a preacher would have five, six, eight, sometimes ten, twelve churches. This Sunday is going to be at that one. That Sunday is going to be at that one. And he has to get on horseback and ride through the different churches to be there. Now, this had an amazing effect upon Americans because, you see, denominationalism was much stronger back then than it is today. As y'all have heard me, if you heard any of my historical series, you know, one of my first things is I want to attack that word denomination. All right? A lot of people get real upset with that word denomination. Why, I don't believe in denominations. I am non-denominational.

29:24Well, congratulations, you just became a denomination. Know what the definition is? Any group or particular set of people with a particular set of beliefs. So if you have the particular belief that you are not a denominational group of people, you have just become a new denomination. You cannot get away from that. But anyway, certainly there's reasons to be upset with some of the division that denominations causes. And this type of situation on Frontier is one of the things that sort of broke down this idea that. If you're not this denomination, you're going to hell, absolutely. No chance whatsoever. And you've got to be part of our denomination. Our denomination is the only denomination that's going to heaven. And there's a few of those still around, by the way. Okay? But anyhow, back then it was just universal. That was the attitude. Because stop and think about it. Believe it or not, going to church was a popular thing back then.

30:24In fact, it's about the only show in town. I don't mean that denigrating at all, but I mean, in terms of chances for social interaction with other people, church was about it. So people want to go to church. And when somebody heard there's a church meeting, let me tell you, people would come from miles around. But you're a Methodist, and them Baptists have got the service this Sunday. Well, I never go to Baptist service. Everybody knows they're going to hell. But you're a young man, and you notice the Methodists sure do have some pretty daughters. Yeah. And first thing you know, they're checking out. And, you know, it might surprise you back in colonial time, a Methodist preacher could preach a Hell and Firestone sermon just about as well as any Baptist could. And I'll be doggone. They're singing the same hymns we sing.

31:22Okay? And they begin to realize: well, maybe some of these folks are saved after all. You see? And so they have to start breaking. That down. So, in the southern colonies, we've talked a little bit about the Puritans up in New England. The South had a whole range of other issues, which I'm going to try to just run through. The big problem with the Anglican church in the South is, really, frankly, it didn't care about folks, unless, of course, you're wealthy. In fact, the way Anglican churches are set up, the back pews are for the poor folks, and in front of the church, you have boxes, and they're rented.

32:08And you can only sit in those boxes if you pay a hefty, hefty payment. And one of the strange things about a lot of the southern Anglican services is the rich people aren't there at the beginning. John, they wouldn't have heard any of your songs tonight. They will wait until well into the service when suddenly the doors back would burst open, and here they come in in all their finery. And they march down the aisles, and guess what the message is?

32:44Here am I. You're so lucky to have me here. I am the wealthiest this, or the wealthiest that, or I am the mayor, or the governor, or whatever. It was used to kind of enforce the social system. Standing. And somewhere along the line, the gospel pretty much was second rate. And guess what? Here's a weird thing. Back in England, the church is episcopal. That means you have, of course, the king, then the archbishops, and then the bishops, and then you have the pastors. In America, almost all that hierarchy, thank you, was missing. You only had the pastors. And so, overseeing the pastors were what they called the vestrymen, which is sort of like a deacon, but not really.

33:37And they were the ones who control and hired and paid the pastors. And usually they're from the wealthy elites, you know, the ones that go gambling, they have cockfighting, have wild parties at their houses. You know, we have these sort of impressions of some of these southern parties being like gone with the wind, you know, waltzes and all that kind of thing. No, the country jig. They'd get down boogie. And they would also engage in activities that was very ungodlike, very unchrist-like. And these are the guys who were hiring the preachers. And if that preacher preaches against their sins, what's going to happen? He's going to get fired. Right? And so that should help to explain where the South was starting off. Off was like a 100% high church Anglican. After the Great Awakening, about 95% of them, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterians. Just en mass. They couldn't wait to burst the doors, get out of those churches. You see? All right, now that's kind of a gross oversimplification, but it does kind of illustrate what was going on there. Okay, so we've already done the frontier. Just to make sure we're clear here, the established churches in New England is congregationalism. You have to pay taxes to support the congregationalist pastor in that community, whether you want to or not. He's paid by the state. They are state officials. In the South, it was the Anglicans. And I think you see more than one reason why folks resented paying these Anglican pastors in the South, considering how they were overlooking all this stuff. Maryland's the oddball. It's supposedly a Catholic colony, although the majority of people there were actually Protestant. But, you know, it was set up as a Catholic colony. And so there you have the sort of pink up there is the area that's congregationalist. Most of that area is, not all of it, there's exceptions to everything I'm saying tonight. But that's the area that's mostly state congregationalist, established. The middle colonies, New York is the established church, is congregationalist, but majority of people. New York or other.

36:02Just everything you can imagine, New York, kind of like today. Okay? And Pennsylvania, there's not an established church because who sets up Pennsylvania? The Quakers is initially the favorite group. But, you know, the Quakers were very open to just about anybody coming in there. And so, so, and then the South, all the southern states were established church Anglican. All right, so let's start getting towards the Great Awakening. Some scholars, one of which is Jonathan Edwards himself, notes that one of the first glimmerings of an awakening in of all places occurs in New Jersey.

36:49Yeah. Just don't usually think of New Jersey as being that religious. But what you have in New Jersey are a whole bunch of Dutch who are Dutch Reformed, which is just a fancy way of saying Dutch Puritans. They're, you know, like in England, Puritans, you know, are Reformed, Calvinist orientation. In Scotland, they're Presbyterians. In France, they're called Huguenots. And in Holland, they're called Dutch Reformed. And so as a young man, I wish I had more time to go about him. He's actually a pretty interesting fellow, but he's only. Get brief mention here. He volunteers. He receives his ordination back in Holland. And you have four churches in America, Colonial America, New Jersey, and I believe they're Dutch-speaking congregations. They needed a pastor. And so he volunteers to go.

37:50And they, you know, we call it or they call it classes. They vote to send him to these four churches in New Jersey. And this guy was a real deal. He had a personal relation with Jesus Christ, and he preached sermons. You know, he'd go verse by verse, and he emphasized practical application of scripture, the need for conversion, repentance. He insisted that his congregants establish a strong, strict, moral example to others if they're going to call themselves Christian, private prayer, devotions, and he believed church discipline was important. Does this church sound familiar? Yeah.

38:35Most churches, they're really following the Lord. I think they're going to emphasize this as well. And after being there a while, and by the way, he had the problem with unregenerate church members too, but he kept on preaching the word, and an amazing revival broke out in all four churches. And Fralin Heusen wrote down his sermons, then they were translated in English. And what's kind of important to remember about Freylinheusen, something about his sermons kind of set a pattern. All the awakening preachers, when people went through their libraries of books and pamphlets that they themselves had studied, his always shows up.

39:18So here you got a guy who didn't even originally speak English when he came here, having had a huge impact on all the great awakener participants of the awakening by that. And of course, what we're going to really get into here, as we talk about a great awakening, there's many, there's thousands of personages involved in the great awakening. Many, many pastors would imitate these two guys, having multiplication of results. But these are probably the two main guys, Edwards and George Whitfield.

39:58Edwards is primarily just here in America. In fact, primarily Connecticut, Massachusetts is where he's operating for the most part. But his writings are going to have an international, worldwide, historic impact that's still going on to this day. Whitfield, from the very beginning, he's international. This guy is going to come to America seven different occasions. He starts out as a very young man. His first trips, first Awakenings that he's involved with, he's only in his 20s. He's often described as tall, skinny, slim.

40:38I think about he and Jonathan Edwards have a share of similarity, and they're very frugal in what they would eat. In fact, I think they both of them kind of damaged their health. They were too frugal, you know, in their eating habits. But does anyone see what's a little disconcerting about Whitfield, though? How would you like to have a cross-eyed preacher preaching at you? You're going to go to hell. Is he looking at me? Okay. Well, anyway, despite this disability, Whitfield, well, you'll come back next time. Whitfield is just a phenomenon that is absolutely, it's almost unbelievable. How in the world do you preach to 30,000 people without a microphone?

41:32And we know he did. And we know they could hear him because we have no other witness but Benjamin Franklin himself, who measured the crowd at Philadelphia, by the way, as a voice experiment. They were great friends, by the way. Franklin and Whitfield totally disagreed on theology. But Franklin, by his own admission, just greatly admired Whitfield, and he loved him. To go and listen to him preach. But of course, being the kind of scientific bent of mind that he was, he also thought this would be a great way to see just how far the human voice can carry. And so he conducted and measured off that during one of his sermons. We'll talk more about that later. But these are the two most important guys, and one I'm going to kind of concentrate on tonight, as time permits, is Edwards.

42:28But let's first get a little thumbnail. After Thralinghusen, things die down. And then in the 1730s, you're going to have things start to get going again with Edwards. Now, I'm going to give you kind of a thumbnail, and then as we go on, I'll give you more detail. Edwards, as I mentioned, becomes pastor of the church at Northampton, Massachusetts. And he, by doing that, becomes pastor of the second largest church in New England. You know, First Church Boston, First Congregational Church, Boston was the largest church. And for whatever reason, Northampton, which is sore to the west, was a population center, you know, fertile land, a lot of farmers. And so he was pastor of that church after Stoddart passed away. But anyway, he is incredibly well educated. In fact, he's a child prodigy, enters Yale at the Early age of 13.

43:33Of course, he's got his master's, which there was almost equivalent to a doctor's degree at age 20. And he briefly served a little pastor at a Presbyterian church up in New York. And he decided that the Presbyterians is a church split. He said, You know, you guys really need to reconcile with the mother church and go back and rejoin. Which is what they did. And that's kind of amazing because by doing that, he was out of a job. But he's just incredible in so many, many ways.

44:10He had been preaching there, took over from his grandfather. The way things worked back in those days, by the way, used to be true of Baptists, and I would like to see that return actually. When a pastor became a church, he would usually be there for life. Solomon Stoddart had been pastor of the church at Northampton for 60 years. He even beat Brother Clyde. Clyde was 40 years here. 60 years. And as a pastor starts getting old, he got up into his 80s. He's still preaching, sharp as a tack, but he physically was beginning to fail. It was kind of traditional in congregations, churches that you then hire an assistant pastor. And it's kind of understood that that assistant pastor is really there to what?

45:00Make sure it's a smooth transition, and he had become the new pastor. And there was quite a competition to be his successor, and Edwards is going to be who they choose. And there's a story behind that if we ever get to it. But Edwards had been there and he'd been preaching, you know, for a number of years. In fact, about 10 years, and nothing extraordinary had happened. But he had been most definitely preaching the word day in and day out. And then suddenly, you have in 1734 this revival broke out.

45:46And I mean, remarkable revival. Men who had been drunkards suddenly gave up the bottle. Men who had been abusive towards their wives became loving and considerate. More stories than I can possibly tell, just all kinds of incredible stories of lives being changed and transformed. Which, if you want to see a miracle, that's the real miracle to see that occur. You've experienced it, you know what I'm talking about. And I know just one off the top of my head that I was reading about. You had the in. This youth group that attended the church, and quite a few of those were unregenerate. You know, they're part of this group that, you know, they're going to church because mom and daddy did. And by the way, mom and daddy hadn't even ever made a profession of faith either. And so you can imagine what they were like outside of church, even back then in colonial times. They have some kind of humorous, but it's not really humorous ways of describing the activities they were involved with. I won't go into that, but there's one lady in particular that she was sort of the community tart.

47:00And I'm not going to explain what that word means, tart, but I think most of you can kind of figure what it means. And boy, she was quite a tart. And she unexpectedly had a conversion experience, came to Edward's office, and he couldn't believe it himself. And in fact, he was actually concerned to present her before the church because he was afraid nobody would believe him. But to his own surprise, her conversion was so sincere. Kind of reminds you, reading the gospel story of what?

47:42The woman at the well, right? What does she do? She brings the entire village. And so the This just incredible things happen. Bible studies spring up. People want to have Bible studies after the sermons. People during the week would, he basically, Edwards organized what we would call home groups, you know. And it's just, it was astonishing. And this went on for three years, very, very strong. And the funny thing about it was, as I've said before, Edwards was the most surprised. And so to try to get his head around this, he is going to write a couple pamphlets, but in this particular one is a narrative of surprising conversions. Okay, later on, he'll write a faithful narrative. And the title is much longer, actually. It's way out there, title. But in that title, he describes this event. And he's very honest and very just straightforward. You can tell he's an observer who is truly amazed at what he's writing about. And he sends this to a friend in Boston. The friend is so struck by this that he sends it to a friend in England. And that friend in England had as a friend Isaac Watts. I think I've talked about him before.

49:19The great hymnist. And Isaac Watts was so impressed with this that he decides to print and publish it in England. And it becomes a sensation in England. Sends a print copy back to Edwards. Edwards knows he's had a few editorial mistakes. He corrects those and then has local printers printed. And it becomes a sensation, bestseller in all 13 colonies. And people, many scholars believe that this sort of helped lay the groundwork for me, the later young awakeners that would, you know, imitate this. And, of course, Edwards goes on, he writes a ton of works. You know, ultimately, in the aftermath of the Great Awakening, there's going to be all sorts of opposition. And right in his own church, he winds up being asked to leave by one vote. And it wasn't the church voting on it, it was this commission they set up. It's really a rig deal. And so he goes, he decides, and he's offered all sorts of offers everywhere. But he decides to take this little church at Stockbridge because he wanted to preach to the Indians. He had always felt that the colonists had not really sincerely tried to convert the Indians. So he goes to this little mission at Stockbridge, and that was one of his happiest times, even there, though he had opposition. But the Indians embraced him very warmly. They absolutely loved him. And in fact, the entire church congregation loved him. There's a couple wealthy individuals there who were always giving him fits. And he, this is where he wrote some of his great theological, even philosophical works, particularly Freedom of the Will, Original Sin.

51:19And then, while there, his daughter had married Aaron Burr. Now, we're not talking about Aaron Burr, the second, you know, the vice president under Jefferson. It's his daddy. And his daddy was a total opposite of his son. And I think one of the reasons his son turned out the way was his daddy died while he was still a baby, basically. He was then going to be raised by Edwards' wife, Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan had also died, but then she died. And let's just say his upbringing did not turn out too well. In fact, I jokingly tell students all the time: if you could resurrect Edwards, he'd probably kill over dead again, see how Aaron Burr turned out. But his son-in-law, Aaron Burr, who was president of Princeton College and just incredible. Dynamic Christian rector of that college. He tragically died early. And so the college comes to Edwards and they ask him to be president. A Presbyterian college, Princeton, comes and asks a congregationalist pastor to be president of their college, which is kind of amazing. And of course, Presbyterians and congregations theologically were very, very similar, so it wasn't really that shocking. And while there, of course, smallpox is another bane, constantly threat. Smallpox epidemic swept through. And Edwards was always reading on various subjects, and he had read about how, you know, going back to the Ottoman Turkish Empire, they did inoculation, which isn't quite the same thing as vaccination. It's more dangerous than vaccination because in inoculation, you're actually infected with actual smallpox from a person who's had it before you, but it's supposed to be weakened. And 99 out of 100, you know, inoculation will keep you from getting smallpox. And so Edwards knew that this would save thousands of people if he could convince people to do it. And so he decides to set an example by having himself inoculated. But guess what? He is one of the 99. And it went bad. And then he's going to die from smallpox. And so that's the end of Edwards. But he does a ton of stuff before he dies, and we'll be getting to that later. All right, but I'm out of time, and so we're going to stop right there. And Brother Tom, would you pray for us? Close us out?