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0:58But Edwards, in fact, is one of the leaders of transferring to psalm singing. Although he had to be careful, they wouldn't usually sing Watts and other hymns and the Wesley hymns by the Wesleys during the morning church service. It would be these after Bible studies that they would have is where they would do the hymn singing. So even back then, that was considered radical to be singing the hymns. Yes, you know, the music wars continue on, I guess. But anyway, here, Emmanuel, we never have really had much control with the music wars because starting off with me, myself, and Lady and her guitar. And so every time we had a new musician, we were like, oh, real excited. And we just add them in. And we've been doing that ever since. If you hadn't noticed.

1:51But anyway, let's get into this. You got Jonathan Edwards. Let's start digging down a little bit deeper about this man. He is born the son of another preacher, Timothy Edwards. That's his father. He's a pastor at East Windsor, and I'll kind of give you an idea where that's located here in a bit, in Connecticut, along the Connecticut River Valley. And his mother, Esther, was the daughter of Solomon Stoddart. And that's going to be very important because Solomon Stoddart is the big guy. He's a pastor of the second biggest church in Massachusetts. And we're going to see Edward is actually going to kind of inherit that pastorate from him. And then, of course, Stoddard is at Northampton. Jonathan was the fifth child of 11 children. All the rest were girls.

2:48Can you imagine having four girls ahead of you and six girls after you, and you're in the middle? Oh my gosh, poor guy. That must have been something. And these girls were not all. Ordinary girls. Timothy insisted that the girls be very, very well educated. And actually, a lot of his homeschooling, which is in effect what Jonathan Edwards was, was by his sisters. And you have letters from Timothy writing home telling the girls, be sure Jonathan does his Latin lessons, which is going to stead him in well. And I'm jumping way ahead of myself. You see, when he gets his master's degree, which would be equivalent to a PhD today, really, is how tough they were, you had to give your sort of defense, well, you had to read your dissertation. They did a little differently from how they do it now. And then they sort of had defense of it all at one sitting. And the entire conversation was in Latin. You had to write the dissertation in Latin, read it in Latin, and then the panel of ministers would ask you questions in Latin, and you had to respond in Latin. I mean, you would think that was left way back in the medieval period, but they were doing that.

4:13Matthew, how would you like to have done that just here recently? Did you just get through your degree there? Our new pastor there? I bet he wouldn't have liked that too much. But anyway, he also, of course, learned Hebrew and Greek. And you've got to understand congregations back then, now guys, y'all rate yourselves here. These preachers would be preaching, and sometimes the sermons could go four hours. In fact, sometimes they'd have preaching preacher and teaching preacher, and about two-hour sermons each.

4:53Can you imagine what one of the problems were? Puritans, people forget this. Puritans were not aliens. They were human beings, and they had some of the same problems you and I have during church services or the preacher's preaching. Guess what it is? Staying awake. Of course, the Puritans were very practical, pragmatic. They had a solution. They had this guy they call the tithing man. Why, I don't know. He didn't collect the offering. He had a long rod.

5:25And on one end was a feather or a raccoon tail. And the other end was a club. And he'd be paroling, you know, the aisles. And if someone were to start dotting off, if it's a lady, she would get goosed with a feather or raccoon tail. If it's a guy, on the head. So anyway, the Puritans, they were pragmatic, I'll tell you that. I guess. But anyway, I don't think Edwards had that at his church, but I do know in the earlier period that's how they would handle that. Well, anyway, he certainly grew up in a very Puritan atmosphere. I told you last time, things are changing.

6:18You know, there's this general decline in church attendance. There's this feeling that people are slipping away. Edwards himself, I was so amazed at the sermon this morning that Tom was giving because Edwards was going through some of the same very things to confront that Tom was confronting up here this morning. Harvard, which was originally established as a very conservative, very Bible-believing college, look at where it's at today. It was already beginning to go into what they call latitudinarianism, or broad latitude, which we have a simpler word for that today, liberalism.

7:05And even back then, there were problems with that. In fact, we're going to see Timothy's going to send his son Jonathan to Yale because Yale was thought to be more scripturally sound than Harvard at the time. At least, that's what Timothy Edwards thought. So, anyway, he's going to enter Yale at the age of 13. Are some of you guys ready here? Some of these younger kids go to A ⁇ M, age 13. And he was no doubt a child prodigy. I don't know if Edwards had photographic memory, but he had something close to it if he didn't. His sermons, he would write them out, but he committed them to memory. And in fact, you know, all the awakening preachers have one very distinguishing mark in that they appeared to give their sermons extemporaneously. Y'all know what that means, extemporaneously? Kind of what I'm doing right now. Without looking at notes, except I cheat up there every once in a while. But he would extemporaneously give. And there's something about that. You've got to understand, back in those days, paper was extraordinarily expensive, so even Edwards would have these tiny little cards about four inches by, you know, and they would write in mini school and they would read their sermons to the congregation. And so, they need the guy with a staff, I tell you, to keep them awake. Can you imagine when a person stops reading and actually looks at the congregation?

9:02It's just such an incredible fact. You may not be aware of this, but you know, teleprompters are a relatively new thing. Does anybody remember who's the first politician that started using teleprompters? It's Ronald Reagan. My dad was a fervent Reagan supporter, and I remember he took me to Dallas to one of Reagan's, you know, at the time, no one thought Reagan could possibly win. He's too radical, too extreme, right-wing, all this kind of stuff, right? And they had the roundtable meetings, they called them back then, and he came to address the roundtable, which was a group of religious folks who, you know, they wanted to see revival in the country come back to Christianity. And they didn't have that much secret service because he hadn't been elected president yet. So I was able to walk around the amphitheater and watch him use the first teleprompters. And it's pretty neat. You know, it looks like you're just talking extemporaneously. And it has greater oomph and greater impact. And that's going to be kind of important, you know, during the awakening, this communication. Remember the Puritans, the frozen chosen, we mentioned last time, supposed to sit there, not show much emotion, with extemporaneous. Speech, the preacher could kind of gauge how the congregation is receiving the message. And he can adjust sort of on the fly as he's preaching. Whitfield was a master at that. And that's, you know, there's this interaction.

10:50I hesitate to say this, but you know, in some African-American congregations, you see a lot more what I'm talking about here. You know, it's not just the preacher preaching, the whole congregation gets into it. And, you know, there's this just synchronization going for. Come on, come on, preach it, preach it, you know. But that's important. It shows that they're engaged. And, of course, you have that for the first time coming to the fore during the awakening preaching, as we're going to see. So he goes to Yale College and he decides to stay after college to work on his master's degree. But that's interrupted because, lo and behold, he's called to take up a pastorate up in New York, of all places, Presbyterian Church. Now, he's a congregationalist. I always thought that's a little strange, but of course, those two groups are very similar. Goes up to New York for this pastorate. I think I told you last time, it doesn't last long because it was a split congregation off of the main church there in town. And he persuaded the congregation to go. Back, and so he basically worked himself out of a job there, and so he returns back to, but that's remarkable. You know, I've known some, shall we say, unsavory pastors who have split churches in order to keep a church, right? You know, and split off, run off of this group, and he gets in trouble and takes a group off. You know, he was about reconciliation and restoration, so that's pretty amazing. Now, I don't know if I is there supposed to be a pointer on this thing, the what?

12:37Middle button. That's neat. Okay. All right. So you got this is the Connecticut River, right? And that's Windsor, where he's raised as a kid. And then, of course, if you go, next slide, he's going to spend most of his life. You see, that's the Connecticut River, it goes up into Massachusetts, and that's Northampton. And that's where he's going to be pastor for most of his life, right there at Northampton. And notice, Northampton is here, Boston's way over here.

13:17For a long time, there was no road from Northampton to Boston. You had to go down the Connecticut River, get a ship, and go around to get to Boston. But his grandfather was such a Beloved by the congregation that they are going to build a road from Northampton to Boston. So, when he got old, he is pastor there for 62 years, Solomon Stoddard. They built a road so he could go back to Boston when Harvard would have all the graduating preachers to get together and they'd have this whole day where the preachers would preach to each other, Graduation Day, and they'd have the graduation of the new preachers. And it's a big, huge event in the state, and so he could go there. So, anyway, the things that we're talking about here, and let's get back to this. He gets his master's degree, 1723, and it's during the time when he gets his master's degree, there's a scandal occurred. What we call the president of the college today, I think they call him a rector, he converted to Anglicanism.

14:37And that was like one of the worst things that could happen with the congregation. You know, they had left the Anglican church because everybody knew those Anglicans were wrong about just about everything. And so, this, you know, the president of the college converts to Anglicanism and suddenly leaves, goes up to New York, starts conversing. King's College. And so they were without a president and without a guy being in charge. And presidents back in those days actually did something.

15:12They usually actually taught most of the classes, you know. And so what they had to do is some of the graduates they make tutors. And Edwards is going to be one of the main tutors to help keep things going. And while he's there as tutoring, actually, even as a college student, he met a girl. Pretty girl. Yeah. She was only 13 years old when he first met her. He's 20, she's 13. Sarah Pierpoint. Yeah. And she was beautiful and actually is more than just skin beauty. She's a very spiritual person, very much, you know, born-again Christian. Edwards was as well. And he was smitten by her.

16:07But she was from one of the best families. Her father was one of the main founders of Yale College. Her great-grandfather was the Reverend Thomas Hooker, who had founded Connecticut, the colony of Connecticut. She had another grandfather who was governor of New York at one time. I mean, just royalty, you know, American royalty. Edwards, well, he had Grandfather Solomon Stoddard, but he himself had very little money, and he was tall, skinny, gawky, awkward, especially around girls. And she was a social butterfly. I mean, she was very at ease in, you know, crowds of people. And poor Jonathan didn't know how to even approach her, you know. But, you know, and then the next thing is, how could he provide for her? See, Puritans were always very practical, as I've said. With a Puritan, the bottom line wasn't if you're in love. The bottom line was, can you support your wife financially?

17:21And they wouldn't consider it unless that was possible, of course. But anyway, there's the two of them there. And he couldn't get her out of his mind, though. He's studying for his master's. He's fixing to have to give his defense, which is just a huge thing to prepare for. And in the midst of his studies, he had his Greek grammar textbook, and he opened the fly leaf. And if you know anything about Edwards, every inch of paper he ever got his hands on, he would write stuff on it. Paper is so expensive. And so this was very lavish for him to take the fly leaf. And devoted to Sarah.

18:04Here's the opening part of it: it says, There's a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of the Almighty Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this great being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on him. Okay, it goes on and on, by the way. That's just the start of it. But he was smitten. And fortunately for him, he might be gawky and he might be socially awkward, but he loved Jesus. And so did she. And that's going to be the difference. And so she's wound over by this very young, very intense young man. But still, there's a problem. How is he going to afford marrying her? Well, at this point, I'm sure probably knowing Edwards and his views on predestination would say Providence intervenes because it turns out Solomon Stoddard is getting way up there in age and he needs a successor. And back in those days, the way they would handle a transfer from one pastor to another, since pastors usually were pastors for life, Is when the pastor is obviously getting up in the stage where he's not going to be around much longer, the church would vote to have an assistant pastor to assist him.

19:46And, of course, the pastor gets a say in this, and Solomon and others decide that of all his relatives, the young Jonathan shows the most promise. And right here, we probably have the problems later on where Jonathan Edwards is going to have some problems with some of his cousins, one of which I think thought he should have been the one to get this position. But anyway, Jonathan Edwards, of course, with this position comes a great increase in pay, and so he can marry Sarah, which they do pretty quickly thereafter. And he was expecting, you know, to be the assistant pastor five, six, seven years. Stoddart dies within two years. And so that means Edwards, still in his early 20s, which was considered to be way too young to be pastor of a major church like this, finds himself the pastor of the second largest church in colonial Massachusetts. And fortunately, he had a wife.

21:00Who is going to is an untold story on how she probably assisted him, helped him. Edwards was incredible at expositing the Word of God, but we came one-on-one with meeting people and you know just getting to know people, he is not very good at it. He is kind of a little bit distant from his own congregation, and yet his congregation revered him because of his ability to exposit the word, but he tended to lead the visitation to his deacons. And I'm sure his wife had a lot to do with that as well. And this later on is probably another reason he's going to run into some problems there at Northampton down the road. But anyway, they are going to also have 11 children.

21:52And that is Northampton. That's, of course, the church where he was at. By the time he leaves there, the congregation is 600 people. And he was pretty much managing that by himself until later on they start getting him assistance. And so, you know, it looks kind of like an idyllic place. It wasn't. All right. Any place has got problems. That was his home while he was there at Northampton. And of course, there's a location in Massachusetts. Now, So, from 1729 to 1734, Edwards serves at Northampton, and there's not really much to report on, except he's a very young pastor.

22:42And then in 1734, he begins preaching a sermon series on justification by faith alone. And a remarkable revival breaks out when he does that. And this will last for about two years. And I mean, it was astonishing. To use the modern lingo, the whole town got saved. It was astonishing. And not only were people having these radical personal conversion experiences, but just incredible stories behind some of these conversion experiences. I mentioned to you last time: abusive husbands become loving, compassionate, drunkards giving up the bottle and totally just turning to Christ. Bible studies sprung up, home group studies sprung up, and just remarkable stories of people's lives being dramatically changed. And as I think I mentioned in the overview, guess who's most surprised by this?

23:57Edwards himself. He couldn't quite figure. Figure out just what all is going on. Of course, he knew it was from the Lord, but why? Why Northampton? Why now? Why here? And that is when he is going to sit down and he writes what turns out, it started off as a letter to a friend in Boston. This friend sends it to another friend in England who gives it to Isaac Watts, the famous hymn writer, just saying one of his songs. And Watts was so impressed with it, he wants to put it in print. And so you have a faithful narrative. Now, a faithful narrative, it comes back to the colonies, is the bestseller in England, is the bestseller in the colonies. And almost all the later awakening preachers had a copy of that.

24:47And it seems to have sort of prepared the groundwork for the greater explosion of the awakening, you know, when it hits in the 40s. So that is going to be there. Of course, ultimately, he's going to do a ton of works. You know, later you've got the surprising work of God, narrative of the surprising work of God. And then he wrote a pamphlet against the slave trade. And then he, of course, the most famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of Angry God. Now, in a way, it's kind of a good thing Tom isn't here tonight because this might give him an idea. As we know, Tom can spend quite a bit of time on a scripture passage, but I don't think he's going to ever beat Edwards.

25:37Now, that's a great passage. Why don't you read it for us, Kevin? Isaiah. Isaiah 55:11, so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereunto I sent it. That's one of my favorite verses, by the way. It's kind of the one of the verses that keeps me going in pioneers. You know, a lot of the college students and pioneers, some of them get a little downcast because they want to see people come to Christ immediately. And, you know, a lot of times we just plant the seed. Someone else waters and someone else harvests us sometimes. And I'm the only one old enough, gray enough hair to see all three things happen.

26:40But it is, I've seen this verse proven so true so many, many times. His word is our duty to proclaim it. It is the Holy Spirit's job to bring forth the fruit from it. We can't do that. But for what? Whatever mysterious reason, we're supposed to be proclaiming it, and the Holy Spirit uses that. And his word will not return void. And you may not think you're succeeding. I guarantee you, if you're proclaiming that word, there's going to be fruit coming from that. Great verse. But can you imagine? 30 sermons on that one verse. He did a series of 30 sermons on that one verse. You know, he would not take a whole book, which after hearing this is probably a good thing, but he'd take a chunk of scripture and then he would exposit, you know, verse by verse, that chunk of scripture. But he wouldn't do a whole book like we're used to here at Emmanuel. But boy, the chunks he took, boy, did he go through them. And so that's how they did it. And Puritan sermons usually, they're divided in three parts. First, you do the text. Of course, always, always context, context of the text. And then they would follow that with what's this text doctrinally teaching. And then they would follow up with application. How do we apply this text? Which I think is a pretty good outline, even today. And that's how Edwards would do it as well. Now, of course, you know I love antiques. Y'all know about me. My side thing is refinishing. I'd love to get an old piece of wood and bring out that beauty of it and all that, and old furniture. Edwards, this is his desk.

28:42And actually, it probably started with just that little middle portion, the downstairs part of it. And he added to it because those boxes up there are actually individual. They just added the boxes to it because he had so many works simultaneously going on that he had to come up with this intricate filing system to keep it all straight, you know. And so he wound up at that desk. I was amazed that the thing still exists. And then, you know, how it was so astonishing to me when I found out, being the dinosaur I am, that you could have more than one computer screen.

29:24You know, you know, and some people have one, two, three, four of them. And you take that little mouse, you can switch, you know, have different screens at a different time and do all these different works all at the same time. Well, this was the closest he could get to that. He had a special podium. This was when he was at Stockbridge, you know, he's being a missionary to the Indians. He had, you know, I guess he was discussing with some friends this problem of all these different books or works he's looking at. He's working on different projects at different times. So they got this special podium for him, and it's Spins. And so he could spin, look at this page, you know, write down, spin it back around this page and write down. So he had multiple screens, you see.

30:12And so he, of course, there's a stereotype of Edwards that is really undeserved. If you look at the actual words that he uses in his sermon, the number one's love, just again and again. And one of his words he liked was happy fide. You know, if you're serving Christ, you know, you can be happy fied. Great, great word. But the sermon that everybody knows about is sinners in the hands of an angry God. Now, Edwards did not hesitate from talking or preaching about hell. And, you know, nowadays, most preachers, that's a topic they will not touch. You know, it will upset people.

31:01Well, you know what? Do you want someone to go to hell? How in the world are you going to encourage them not to go? You've got to talk about it. In fact, I submit to you that if you really love somebody, you need to be talking about hell. And, of course, his sermon on sinners in the hands of an angry God. Really was warning people of what's going to happen if they die and they do not know Christ. The funny thing about this sermon, he preached it at Northampton and it was sort of, hmm, okay.

31:47It really didn't make that big of an impact. Then he was invited. There's a little group of preachers going to be preaching in Enphil. And he goes down there, and the preacher that's supposed to preach got sick. I have a lot of that going around, right? And lost his voice. And so someone says, who's going to preach? You know, last minute, in case y'all didn't know that, last Sunday, we always had that happen. The pastor that's supposed to preach last Sunday, this is what happened, you know, and Matt thought he's going to have to do it. Tom said, no, I'll do it. So, anyway, this happens all the time. And he says, well, I have a sermon in my saddlebag out there. I said, oh, could you preach it? And so it was sinners in the hands of anger and God.

32:38And with Edwards, when he would preach, he did not preach extemporaneously, but everybody thought he did because he didn't look at his notes. He had it memorized in his head. And he would look kind of a little bit over people's heads, and he would just like turn on, you know, his tape recorder. Of course, he'd have emotion. With Edwards, it was the way in which he used language. This guy was a logician. I mean, logic, he's just incredible. His sermons are incredibly logically built. And each word is like a stone building an edifice, a case for what he's arguing in his sermon. And he did almost not quite monotone, but he starts making his case and he starts reconnecting with the congregation. And Kevin, why don't you read that for me?

33:42The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over a fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire. He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He has a purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight. You are 10,000 times more abominable than in his eyes than the most hateful, venomous serpent is to ours.

34:21You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did in his prince, and yet it is. Nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. Okay, that's just a small little excerpt. It goes on. And the power of God hit the congregation, and people start crying out, people start passing out, and in fact, the original sermon, he was never able to complete it. So, such pandemonium kicked in that he literally had to stop speaking because nobody could hear him anymore.

35:12And this is in the midst of the awakening. And things like this, by the way, it's not just in Enphil. Other preachers throughout, as though the Lord had descended His Holy Spirit upon the American colonies, up and down New Jersey. Of course, the South seems to have been last, but you have these amazing things start happening. And even before Whitfield got there, this was already beginning to happen. And let's go on to the next one. Now, that sounds pretty bad, but actually, even in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Edwards then offers salvation.

36:00Read this one. And now you have an extraordinary opportunity. A day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open and stands in calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners. A day wherein many are flocking to him and pressing into the kingdom of God. Many are daily coming from the east, west, north, and south. Many that were very lately in the same miserable condition that you are in are now in a happy state, with their hearts filled with love to him who has loved them and washed them from their sins in his own blood, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.

36:49Okay. All right. And so that gives you a little taste of the sermon, which in some ways, unfortunately, other ways, fortunately, came to be the stereotypical sermon attached to him. And in fact, he did many, many sermons on the love of God. And, you know, of course, those who want to attack him, they only want to talk about this one, you know, sermons on sinners in the hands of angry God. And they tend to want to portray Edwards as simply this fire and brimstone type preacher. And that was really not the case. But he wrote. Quite a few things, and one of his most popular works really wasn't by him, but without him, it would never have been put in print. And that is an account of the life of the late Reverend David Brainerd.

37:49That book has inspired so many missionaries throughout history. It's just incalculable how many lives it involved. Now, the way Edwards got involved with Brainerd was: well, Brainerd was orphaned fairly early as a young man. First, his father died, then his mother died. He went to live with his sister, and yet he inherited a whole farm. Could have lived the life of a farmer, you know, gotten married, had a wife and kids, and all that. But he had this astonishing conversion experience. He decided he wanted to preach. He's called to the gospel ministry. He goes to Yale, and unfortunately, he had a bad experience there. At the time, the awakening is raging about. And as we're going to find out next time, there was a lot of reaction against the awakening. You had a lot of people that are angered by it, even. And the rector at Yale at this point, a guy named Clapp, was very anti-Great Awakening.

39:00And he was very down on Brainerd because Brainerd was very much in favor of the awakening. And basically, on one occasion, one of the tutors, who apparently was light clap, Brainerd was talking to him in his dorm room with a friend, says, This guy has got the grace of this chair here. In other words, he didn't have any grace. And another student's walking by, runs and tattles on him, and he's kicked out of the college for that. Incredibly. And so, and you've got to understand that makes it very difficult for you to get your ordination papers, for you to be able to preach, you know. Remember, state church, we talked about established churches last time. And he had a really tough time, you know, getting into the ministry. Friends interceded, and what they did decide they could let him do is go and be a missionary to the Indians, which he is all excited about. And he goes, and at first doesn't have much success, but he does not give up. He presses on.

40:11And he finally gets with a group of Indians where almost 100 of them confess Christ, become Christians. They even set up a little community for him. But then he contracts tuberculosis, right? Consumption, they called it. And he, that's, you know, Death sentence. But he, you know, still tried to do some ministry, began riding his horse quite a bit, visiting other different awakening preachers. He finally makes it to Edwards' house where he basically collapses. The Edwardses take him in, and Edwards, you know, he makes something of a comeback. Edwards, of course, would have breakfast with a guy, meals with a guy. He was just so impressed with the zeal and the love of Christ that this young man had. And, of course, he had written his journals of all his ministry amongst the Indians. And he and Edwards, Edwards was a big supporter of missions to the Indians. And Brainerd, well, ultimately, he passes away. In the meantime, Edwards' daughter, Jerusalem, who was caring for Brainert, they had fallen in love with each other, but they never got married because he knew he wasn't going to live very long. But she, shortly thereafter, she died from a fever, and they were buried together. And Edwards was just, you know, it's almost like losing a son when he died, even though he had known him for a short period of time. So Edwards collects all his papers and then writes, you know, an account of the life of the late Reverend David Wright. And this becomes international, you know.

42:04Once again, it goes to England throughout the American colonies, and it's going to inspire many missionaries in the future. Now, he gets in trouble in the midst of the Great Awakening. Remember, he had his own sort of awakening occurred there for about two years. That kind of died down. Then here comes the Great Awakening. Here comes George Whitfield, and you know, then you have the tenants, and then you have Samuel Davies down south, and you have just tons of other preachers who kind of copycat what George Whitfield did. The awakening goes up and down, length and breadth, of 13 colonies.

42:52But in Northampton, things begin to die down. You know, this initial excitement, enthusiasm, and then there's some tragic occurrences that kind of killed it, I guess you could say. For one thing, you had a notorious suicide occur there in the community. And Edwards, noticing that this religious zeal was dying down, is very concerned about it, he began to start looking at what they're doing in the church that might be causing it. And one of the things that had bothered him ever since he had become pastor there was the way. The church at Northampton handled the Lord's table, you know, Lord's Supper, we would call it. And what was going on there, Stoddard has started a practice allowing people to partake of the Lord's Supper even if they had not made a profession of faith.

43:50And Edwards did not, and I think correctly, feel that that was the correct thing to do. And so he is going to decide to change policy. Now, you know, when you've been doing something for decades and you come in, you know, you're a different pastor, and you're going to say, we're not going to do it that way anymore, you can bet you there's some people that are going to get upset about it, especially if it's your kid who's being told that he can't partake of the Lord's Supper when in the past he could. Then there's also another kind of scandal that occurred there in the community.

44:24You had midwives. You know, most women, when they had their babies, they didn't go to doctors, they went to midwives. And the midwives had these manuals, you know, how you do midwifery. And, you know, it's some information there that, you know, young men probably shouldn't be looking at. And they got, some of the teenage boys got a hold of this manual, and they were making fun of some of the young ladies using material from that. And Edwards kind of made a tactical mistake when he. Does the correction church discipline? He calls them out, you know, instead of doing, you know, where you first do go one and then you have witnesses. He just called them out in front of church and God and everybody. And this, of course, angered some of the families. And for four years, they're after him, so to speak. And ultimately, after this turmoil, even though probably a majority of the church was still in favor of him, they kind of did a little rigging where they're going to go around the congregation itself. And they had this, what they call the Hampshire sort of like pastors association vote to get, to, you know, fire him as the minister at Northampton. And he still stayed there for several months afterwards. It's kind of, it's kind of funny. They fired him, and then they realized, oh my gosh, what are we going to do? We don't have anybody preach next Sunday. And so they asked him to continue preaching even after firing him. And this goes on for several months. And Edwards agrees to do it, which shows a Christ-like attitude.

46:11I'm afraid, B, I say, you're crazy. I'm not about to, but he did. And he had lots of offers. A huge group came up to him and says, let's just forget these guys. Let's go down the street, form a new church, and you'd be our pastor. And we're not going to give you the trouble these guys gave you. You know, it probably was very tough. For him to do that, but he says, no, I don't think that'd be proper. And he had several other offers, very nice church situations, other locations that he could have gone to. Remember, this guy's internationally famous. And instead, this church at Stockbridge, which was a mission to the Indians, needed a pastor. And he decides to go to Stockbridge. And there he's going to have some problems too. But on the other hand, that is where he's going to write some of his greatest works while he's there at Stockbridge. Now, I don't know how I jumped way down there. Let's see. Jonathan, would you read this? Before you do, let me set it up, though. In the midst of all this, during the Great Awakening, there's one occasion when Yale is having its graduation day, and you're going to have all these preachers gather there. Before that even occurs, though, you have the trustees get together for a meeting on doing business for the college, and the meeting blew up. And what they blew up over was the Great Awakening. You know, some of the trustees were very hostile, and they didn't want any of that stuff coming to the college. And some were saying, well, all this emotionalism, this is not of God, and we need to shut this down. And, well, they sort of tabled the business. Because the preaching is about to start, guest preachers. And guess who's the lead guest preacher? Former alumni, Jonathan Edwards. And he preaches a masterful sermon, which kind of shut the guys who are against awakening down. And we don't have time to go through that sermon, but I do want to read the scriptural text of his sermon because I think the scriptural text can be applied not only to that situation, but to us as Christians in any situation where you've got fakery, chicanery, you know, people, wolves in sheep's clothing, trying to mislead the flock. I think this is probably the set of scriptures you might want to go to. So, Jonathan, would you read this for us?

48:511 John 4, verses 1 through 6. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

49:26Little children, you are from God and have overcome them. For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world, therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Let me just simply say: when Edwards does his later great classic works, which become not only theological, major, impacting works on later scholarship throughout the ages, and not just theological, but also philosophical, the thing that I know Marston in his book notes that I think is very significant, he says, whereas these guys start their philosophical systems, sometimes even their theological systems, with human reason, Edwards always started with God.

50:31He was God-centric in everything. And I think that's why he continues to have such a huge impact. And so we're out of time. I do want to quickly just jump down. And next time we're going to be taking up George Whitfield. I have just a couple of things to finish up with Edwards, but we're pretty much through with Edwards. And if you want a short, quick look. Little book that anybody can read in a matter of hour.

51:05Well, I don't know. People read different speeds, but very quick. This would be by Lawson. In fact, we might hear from Lawson next time. George Whitfield, Evangelistic Zeal, masterful, short little work. And then Thomas Kidd. I'm curious, Brother Waypes, are you familiar with Kidd? He's at Midwestern. He used to be at Baylor, but now he's at Midwestern. George Whitfield, America's Spiritual Founding Father, which is a great book, but a lot thicker, even though you've got more time. And then sort of overview for the Great Awakening itself, also by Kidd, the Great Awakening. Those are some of the things that I'll be pulling from, needless to say, as we get to Whitfield. But with that, let me pray, and you'll be dismissed. Lord Jesus, I thank you for these men of the past, men and women of the past who have stood fast in defending their faith in you. Because, Lord Jesus, you are worthy of our praise, and you give us meaning and purpose, and without you, Lord, there is no meaning and purpose. And Lord, I pray that each of us would learn, as Edwards did. To place his faith not in what man says, but in what your scripture says, to trust and rely upon the word of God. And Lord, when I look at what happened in the Great Awakening, it's not because of Edwards, it's not because of Whitfields, not because of his innumerable preachers and their faithfulness alone that brought about such an awakening. Thousands upon thousands of people coming to you. Lord, it was your Holy Spirit descending. And so, Lord, we know this nation is in travail. And, Lord, we would pray that revival yet again could come. And we know it cannot come without your spirit. And so, Lord, we would hope and pray that this nation could return back to you. And, Lord, that men of God would again boldly speak your word and not conform themselves to the dictates of human reason. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.