"Revivals & Revivalism"

12strings · Jul 21, 2012

Has anyone else read this book by Iain Murray?

I'd like to hear both reformed and non-cal perspectives, if by chance any non-cals have read it?

He makes a strong case against many of the practices of John Wesley and even more so against Charles Finney. Murray is very thorough in his citations, and makes Finney look pretty bad, but I also realize he has a bias against Arminianism.

Yeshua1 · Jul 23, 2012

12strings said: ↑

Has anyone else read this book by Iain Murray?

I'd like to hear both reformed and non-cal perspectives, if by chance any non-cals have read it?

He makes a strong case against many of the practices of John Wesley and even more so against Charles Finney. Murray is very thorough in his citations, and makes Finney look pretty bad, but I also realize he has a bias against Arminianism.
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Just a general point!

man revival produces 'converts", and emotionalism, and for awhile 'looks good", but soon runs "out of steam", while true revival has a ongoing effect, changing the culture/climate, and familiy trees!

Tom Butler · Jul 23, 2012

I read a borrowed copy years ago, so I googled to refresh my memory.

The book covers the period from 1750-1858, and begins following the First Great Awakening (1735-1740).
Here's a review of the book by Bobby Jamieson of 9Marks:
http://gospelbbq.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/revival-and-revivalism/

Here's an excerpt from the review:

Murray’s story, then, begins with the heirs of the First Great Awakening who ministered from New England to Virginia, men such as Samuel Davies and Alexander McWhorter (Chs. 1-4). These pastors held to the same theology that drove Edwards’ and Whitefield’s preaching, and they had been personally impacted by the events of 1735-1740. Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, these men and the ministers who followed them periodically experienced the blessing of God on their ministries in ways that also merited the label ‘revival.’
Revival: Gift of God, not Guaranteed Result
Like their predecessors, these pastors knew that revivals were the sovereign work of God and could not be explained in any other way. Therefore, they preached the gospel, pleaded with sinners, and prayed for fruit like they had for years; and for reasons known only to God, he sometimes blessed these labours remarkably, and sometimes he didn’t. These revivals, in other words, were neither planned by men nor achieved by men. They did not involve any unusual or novel evangelistic techniques. They were understood, therefore, to be gifts of God.
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Here's another excerpt:

By the 1820s and 1830s, two major shifts had occurred throughout American evangelicalism. The first was a doctrinal shift regarding conversion. Up to 1800, evangelicals almost universally believed and preached that God must sovereignly give someone a new nature to enable him or her to repent and believe. By the 1830s, this was widely replaced by an understanding of conversion in which the decision to repent and believe lay entirely within an individual’s own power.
This led to (or, in some cases, followed) a shift in evangelistic practice. Many evangelicals adopted practices that sought to bring about an immediate decision. The ‘anxious bench,’ the altar call, singling people out personally in public prayer, warning hearers to respond immediately or else lose their chance to repent — all these practices and more grew out of the new belief that conversion was something within a person’s power to achieve, or even to effect in others.
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The result, says Bobby Jamieson, was "Revivalism."

That is, the idea that revival is worked up instead of sovereignly poured out...and can be secured through "proper" means.

You can find Murray's book available at Amazon and other sources. It's a great read for both Cal and non-Cal.

Tom Butler · Jul 23, 2012

Iain Murray talks about his book in this interview here:
http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/revival-calvinism-interview-iain-murray/

"Revivals & Revivalism"

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