New Audio Links

When someone gives me a sermon or lecture to listen to, I usually don’t.

Well, I hope you’re not like me. Below are some links to some helpful 2K lectures. I’ve also added them to the “The Tempting Sounds” list in the sidebar.  Perhaps you’ll take the time for a few of these so you can hear directly from some 2K thinkers.

The Two Kingdoms Doctrine in Scripture by Matthew Tuininga——>HERE

Christianity & Politics 2011 Lecture Series at Christ Reformed Church D.C.———>HERE

Also added: Christ and the State by David VanDrunen——>HERE

Can Presbyterians Revive?

Here’s a follow-up from the previous post. Again, from This Day in Presbyterian History, the editor opens with skepticism:

I came across the following account of a series of revivals that took place in North Carolina in 1802.

Presbyterians don’t generally know what to do with such accounts. We like to keep our hands at our sides. Still, I think there is a place in our theology for reformation and revival, to admit there are exceptional times of harvest, when God’s people are particularly conscious of sin and turn from it, and when the Lord brings in great harvests of souls.

I agree in principle that God certainly can, and does, sometimes grow his church at different rates at different times, but the following description of people camping from Friday-Monday (or longer?) for tent meetings on a mountaintop sounds a lot more like Finney than Ordinary Means.

The fourth general meeting was appointed on Friday, March 27, and was held at New Providence Church, under the charge of Mr. Wallis, in Mecklenburg county, about twelve miles southeast of Charlotte, and somewhat more than seventy miles north of Camden. The encampment was on a beautiful mount, easy of ascent from every direction, and more than half surrounded by a little crystal stream, which afforded water sufficient for the people and horses. It was clothed with a thick growth of giant oaks, with very little undergrowth. By three o’clock in the afternoon it was swept clear of timber, the tents were pitched, the fuel was gathered, and thousands, with their covered wagons and stretched canvas arranged in regular lines of encampment, covered the summit…

During the evening, and throughout the greater part of the night, there were exercises of singing, prayer, and exhortation in the several tents. The novelty of the scene, the fervor of devotion, and the depth of feeling so affected the multitude that few closed their eyes in sleep to the dawn of day. Before the services commenced on Saturday morning, three persons were struck down. At the close of the forenoon sermons several more were similarly affected; and the number continued to increase until the close of the meetings. Seventeen ministers were present, and about five hundred communicants participated in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which was administered in the midst of the camp without noise or disturbance. At the same time preaching was going forward at three different stations. At the close of the services on Monday, continuing as they did till midnight, there were about one hundred persons prostrate on the ground, the greater part of whom were shouting aloud, and many of them in the most earnest manner entreating for mercy. While Dr. Hall was at prayer, about forty fell at the same instant.

I’d rather go back to the notions from the previous post about what “genuine revival” looks like:

A genuine revival is noiseless, orderly, solemn and even awful. … The spirit of a genuine revival repudiates all excesses of feeling, speech, and action. It abhors all irregularities; all eccentricities in the manner of the preacher; all wild incoherent ravings; all personalities of address; praying for individuals by name in public assemblies, irreverent familiarity with the name of God; and calling on individuals in promiscuous meetings, to tell what God hath done for their souls. It rejects whatever is theatrical in gesture, pompous or vulgar in expression, and offensive to a cool dispassionate judgment, in stories and anecdotes. It demands solemnity; deep, heartfelt, all pervading solemnity in the preacher, the church and the congregation.

It seems that this author from Charleston SC in 1838 would have considered these 1802 meetings “about twelve miles southeast of Charlotte” NC, as:

In the second class, the truth of God is half wrapt up; doctrines offensive to the carnal heart may not be preached, lest the revival stop; total depravity; the sinner’s utter helplessness; eternal election; God’s absolute sovereignty; the resistless agency of the Holy Spirit, must all yield to the doctrine of the sinner’s ability; this is the grand fulcrum on which rests the whole moral machinery, by which he is to be renewed, and sanctified and transferred to heaven! And then, in order to complete success, protracted meetings of various kinds, extending from four to forty days must be maintained, and the most popular, not the most spiritual preachers in all the country must be called in, to give repeated and powerful impulses to the work. And when these means are exhausted, and the excitement once begins to flag, the Minister loses his order, the Church remits her prayer meetings; and the mass of community move on as if nothing had happened.

In such revivals we have little confidence. “Except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

 

 

 

The Second Awakening Looks at the First

Thanks to This Day in Presbyterian History, here are some excerpts from an article in The Charleston Observer, dated 14 Apr 1838:

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11. No heavier curse can fall upon a community, than a spurious revival. Stupidity is dreadful; but it is mercy compared with false excitement. Lukewarmness is deplorable; but it leaves room for repentance. Infidelity is horrible; but it may yield to conviction. Hypocrisy and self deception are worse than all. The fire of God’s wrath only can remove them. They are the offspring of spurious revivals and combine in their character all, and more than all that is fearful in stupidity, lukewarmness and infidelity together.

12. A genuine revival is noiseless, orderly, solemn and even awful. God is in the midst of it. And his presence carries death to levity, presumption, arrogance and proud display. It inspires an awe like that felt at the foot of Sinai. It creates a trembling throughout the whole camp. It is marked by deep and often long continued conviction of sin; overwhelming sorrow for the hardness of the heart; earnest pleadings with a holy and just God for light and direction; a disposition to retire from observation, and vent the souls anguish in the closet; love for the Bible; abhorrence of all lightness of speech and behavior; clear apprehension of the law of God, in its purity, spirituality, compass and ends; great fears of self deception; thorough searchings of the heart; many, many tears and heart-breakings, in view of past offenses; and many strong fears that the day of mercy may have gone by forever.–Where religious excitement is not attended by marks like those both among Christians and sinners, we have no confidence in it.–Some souls may be converted; but more are likely to be ruined, beyond all hope of recovery.

13. The spirit of a genuine revival repudiates all excesses of feeling, speech, and action. It abhors all irregularities; all eccentricities in the manner of the preacher; all wild incoherent ravings; all personalities of address; praying for individuals by name in public assemblies, irreverent familiarity with the name of God; and calling on individuals in promiscuous meetings, to tell what God hath done for their souls. It rejects whatever is theatrical in gesture, pompous or vulgar in expression, and offensive to a cool dispassionate judgment, in stories and anecdotes. It demands solemnity; deep, heartfelt, all pervading solemnity in the preacher, the church and the congregation.

18. It is a fact, not to be disguised, that there is a vast difference between the revivals which blessed the Church in the days of Edwards, Strong, Griffin and Payson, and the revivals of the past ten or fifteen years. They are not to be named together. There are individual exceptions, no doubt. But we speak of them as classes. And in the first class, the whole truth of God was declared plainly, pungently, argumentatively, and without compromise. The whole reliance of Ministers and Churches was on the Holy Spirit. They stood still, and saw the salvation of the Lord. When the pillar of fire moved before them, they moved. When it passed behind them they passed in holy awe. And long did those revivals continue; deep and all penetrating was their influence; lasting as time and eternity were their visible and happy effects.

In the second class, the truth of God is half wrapt up; doctrines offensive to the carnal heart may not be preached, lest the revival stop; total depravity; the sinner’s utter helplessness; eternal election; God’s absolute sovereignty; the resistless agency of the Holy Spirit, must all yield to the doctrine of the sinner’s ability; this is the grand fulcrum on which rests the whole moral machinery, by which he is to be renewed, and sanctified and transferred to heaven! And then, in order to complete success, protracted meetings of various kinds, extending from four to forty days must be maintained, and the most popular, not the most spiritual preachers in all the country must be called in, to give repeated and powerful impulses to the work. And when these means are exhausted, and the excitement once begins to flag, the Minister loses his order, the Church remits her prayer meetings; and the mass of community move on as if nothing had happened.

In such revivals we have little confidence. “Except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

What Would Jesus Brew?

From my buddy Mike Hess, owner and proprietor of Hess Brewing (and sole provider of liquid refreshment to Hoagies&Stogies), here’s an unfortunately titled article in the Wall Street Journal. This bit in the middle is about Hoagies&Stogies:

For at least two church brewing groups, the activity has gone commercial. Hess Brewing Co. in San Diego and Monday Night Brewing in Atlanta both started as Bible study group projects.

Mike Hess says the New Life Presbyterian Church group began with a dozen members and now boasts between 60 and 80 regulars with as many as 100 on occasion. That helped him “drain tanks” regularly, test out several recipes and get feedback on the flavors and styles. Hess Brewing is expanding into a new, larger location—a former Christian book store that had been owned by church members. Mr. Hess’s Belgian “Trinitas” beer, named for the Holy Trinity, is now one of the brewery’s mainstays.

I wouldn’t call H&S a “Bible study group project”; usually I call it something like a Reformed Men’s Theological Debate Society.

I guess it’s not too surprising that WSJ jumped on the phrase WWJB (and Google says it’s fairly ubiquitous), but happily the real point is captured fairly well in the closing quote of the article. Rather than beer being somehow sanctified through association with Jesus or his church, “beer or alcohol in moderation can be a gift from God’s creation.”

So how about you pop open a nice cold gift from God’s creation, and kick back and watch this cool time-lapse video of heavy machinery installing giant brew vessels into their basement home at the new Hess Brewery?

Speaking of Common Grace…

What do Abraham Kuyper and Jean Valjean have in common?  An at once modest but high view of political institutional power.

But too often the freedom championed today is the freedom of the antinomian revolutionaries, a blanket “freedom from” with no concern for the ends to which it will be directed. The problem with this libertine conception of freedom is that it treats all men as radically individual, as bearers of ‘rights’ over and against the societies to which we belong…

…Legalism and antinomianism fatally pervert the truth about just authority, and both errors loom large as threats to our political well being: the former as a propagandist terror and the latter as a destructive overreaction to it. Les Misérables instructs us in the Aristotelian golden mean between these two: We should neither worship nor despise the law, but navigating between this Scylla and Charybdis, between Javert and Enjolras, we should love and respect the law always. It will not be our salvation, but it will be instrumental in instructing and guiding us toward that goal. Let us delight in the law and follow the witness of Jean Valjean, of whom Hugo wrote, “It seemed as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law.”

Guess Who

Cornelius Van Til stands as the prince of twentieth-century Christian apologetics. He has had by far the most profound impact on my own thinking of all my teachers. His theological insight and prophetic witness have been a conscience, if not canon, and his warmly human and gracious godliness has been an inspiration for the life which is in Christ Jesus. To turn a biblical phrase, may he not regard the small estate of this book but only the unbounded esteem and affection his servant, the author, would express in dedicating it to him.

Who has unbounded esteem and affection for CVT and his prophetic canon? Guess the author and the book, and you win free unlimited access to the entire back archives of the Confessional Outhouse!

All Work and No Play

Some of the discussion at OldLife about high and low culture has prompted me to re-post.